Strong Winds Knock Out Power, Blow Down Trees In Kankakee County
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A wild weather day in Kankakee County Thursday took down a huge tree, some power lines and even took the roof off one home.
It's part of a major winter storm wreaking havoc across part of the Midwest.
Winds in Kankakee County hit 43 miles per hour Thursday.
Katrina Banks describes the power behind the punch of the massive tree outside her Kankakee home.
"It was a real boom noise," she said. "I thought it fell on my house because of the way it sounded. It, like, shook my house. It shook."
Instead the giant limb dropped on a car driving on the other side of the street.
"The front of the car, the back and then part of it went down in the middle," Banks said.
A grandmother and her young grandson were inside the car.
"She was scared, nervous," Banks said. "She didn't know what was going on."
About 15 minutes away was another bewildering display of Mother Nature's muscles.
Gusts topping 40 mph tugged off part of a roof. Police blockades interrupted Briana Grove's newspaper delivery.
"We find all kinds of stuff on the paper routs -- happenings or craziness or whatever, but this, this pretty much tops it," Grove said.
The building houses a dentist's office and other businesses and sits in the middle of Manteno.
"We were concerned that if that started coming up in the wind and started scattering through the town that obviously somebody could get hurt or more property could be damaged," Grove said.
By Thursday night it looked like nothing ever happened, but a peek around the corner showed holiday decorations in disarray. Kankakee suffered some Christmas casualties too, but Banks puts this wild, windy weather in perspective.
"Thank God she didn't get hurt or her grandbaby get hurt," she said. "It's amazing that the tree missed her because of how hard that tree came down. It probably would have killed her.
Winds pulled down power lines across several counties, zapping electricity at at least 1,500 houses.