If divine intervention saved a former president’s life last week, then divine intervention must have played a role Monday night sparing Chicagoland viewers the spectacle of the Republican National Convention.
Tornado warnings knocked the GOP off local programming, with weather folks moving to command status as dire storms blew through the region.
Many of us were ready to sit down and watch Grand Old Party members in all their red-white-and-blue finery open the first day of the nominating convention, which ends Thursday. With a bag of Skinny Pop popcorn at the ready and a new carafe of afternoon sun tea brewed before winds up to 70 mph invaded Lake County, I certainly was.
Yet, in these stormy political times, wild weather has a way of rapidly changing perspectives and the political thermometer. You know you’re among strange happenings when National Weather Service meteorologists needed to take shelter at the peak of the storm system in their south suburban Romeoville office in Will County.
Sure, we could have switched to CNN or another of the cable news outlets, or gone streaming. But who wants to be caught unaware when life-threatening and dangerous storms are swirling in the neighborhood?
While Republicans in Milwaukee welcomed former President Donald Trump and his pick for vice president, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, tornado warning sirens sounded across Lake County. It turned out only a sliver of the county, mainly along the Lake-Cook Road corridor, was officially identified as being in the line of tornadic activity.
That was of little matter when weather folks pre-empted the GOP lovefest with extreme weather reports of upward of 20 tornadoes, fueled by a long-range “derecho storm line,” racing across the region. The NWS has confirmed that, so far, 11 twisters touched down in northeast Illinois and northwest Indiana. Included was one in west suburban Sugar Grove in Kane County; two others in the city of Chicago, a rare occurrence.
A derecho, a bow-shaped storm system that continues for at least 250 miles, hit Lake County on July 11, 2011, knocking out power to homes and businesses in most of the eastern portion of the county for nearly a week. Straight-line wind gusts Monday night topped 75 mph, as reported near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
The garden rain gauge in God’s quarter-acre measured nearly three inches of precipitation, with other parts of Lake County getting more and some less. The sump pump valiantly kept up with the tropical deluge. The weather service said torrential rains fell within mere hours, prompting flash flood warnings.
Thousands remain without power, with ComEd saying at the height of the storm some half-million customers were in the dark. Some may not have electricity restored until Friday.
There was no lack of power in the cool safety of Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, about 30 miles north of the Illinois border, as a few Republicans decided to ignore calls by those in both political parties to lower vicious rhetoric given the assassination attempt on former President Trump over the weekend. Chief ignorer leading the charge was Wisconsin’s own U.S. senator, Ron Johnson.
According to reports, in his address to the convention he called Democratic policies a “clear and present danger” to America, saying the party’s “fringe agenda” includes biological males competing against biological females in sporting events, and the “sexualization and indoctrination of our children.” Democrats, he added, “are the party of open borders, reckless spending, weaponized government and weakness on the world stage.”
Lowering the rhetorical heat lasted only a few days, it seems, if the senator’s attack is any indication. Johnson, when asked to explain his broadside, came up with a wacky explanation: The speech was different than the one he had expected to deliver.
“That speech was written last week,” he told one news outlet, adding, “They literally loaded the wrong speech” into the teleprompter. Improbably, he continued speaking knowing it was the wrong speech?
Finally watching more of the Republican confab, we see speakers blasting Democrats and the Biden administration. Democrats get their chance to do the same during their convention Aug. 19-22 at the United Center in Chicago.
If this is how the presidential election season is beginning, maybe we should stick to watching the weather reports where there are enough stormy conditions to become agitated about.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
Twitter: @sellenews