Equipped with shovels, gloves and boots, Auburn Gresham residents were working to manually unblock a sewer drain Saturday night as heavy rain and severe flooding put a damper on 4th of July festivities throughout the city and suburbs.
Parts of the city saw as much as 2 inches of rain leading up to fireworks displays that were set for Saturday evening, according to the National Weather Service.
The heaviest rainfall in Chicago largely fell south of the Eisenhower Expressway, where parts of the South Side saw about 1 to 2 inches of rain, said Lee Carlaw, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Jason Wells, 52, said his attempt at clearing the road in Auburn Gresham wasn’t the first time he and his family have tried to unclog the sewer amid inclement weather.
His son and nephews were helping him just before 8 p.m. Saturday, and he said he’s dealt with this issue on his block for 50 years.
Wells said he doesn’t typically call 3-1-1 to unclog the drain because response times can amount to several hours.
“I know how to unclog it anyway,” Wells said. “Let it go down the best way we can.”
Wells said luckily he and his neighbors did not appear to have any flooding within their homes as of yet, and they were working to keep it that way.
The North Side of the city generally saw less than an inch of rain Saturday, and in many cases about a half-inch of rain, Carlaw said late Saturday evening.
But the western and southwestern suburbs were inundated with rain, Carlaw said. The hardest-hit corridors included stretches from Sugar Grove and Aurora toward Naperville, Woodridge, Darien, Oak Lawn, Orland Park, northeastern Will County and Bolingbrook, Carlaw said.
Another area with heavy rainfall included northwest DuPage County and northeastern Kane County, including the Carpentersville, Elgin, St. Charles, Hanover Park and Schaumburg areas, he said.
Carlaw urged residents in the western suburbs to use extra caution Saturday evening because flooded roads can be harder to see after dark. He said additional showers and isolated storms could linger into Sunday morning before shifting south of the area by the afternoon.
Casey Sullivan, another meteorologist with the NWS, said earlier Saturday evening that the heaviest storms in the Chicago area were heading toward Northwest Indiana.
But not before saturating southern Kane County, southern DuPage County, and far northern Will County.
“We’re hearing of multiple roads closed and streets flooded in Kane, DuPage, Will and Kendall counties,” Sullivan said.