6 Years Ago, Near Hurricane Force Winds Devastated Quincy

We've just passed the 6th anniversary of one of the most devastating wind events in our area. Near hurricane force winds brought trees down and shut down power for days in Quincy.

It was the afternoon of July 13, 2015 when a thunderstorm entered our area. If you remember how mean those clouds looked that day when the storm rolled in, you knew we were in trouble.

Jim Lawrence captured video of the storm and its aftermath.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center documents the massive damage of that day. They report wind speeds up to and possibly exceeding 74 mph. The damage certainly wasn't limited to Quincy. Much of Adam's County and the Midwest in general had huge trees uprooted.

Hurricane-strength winds are sustained winds of 74 mph and higher. We weren't far off that mark on July 13, 2015.

If you look at the damage report from NOAA, you'll see multiple entries for Adams and Pike County that look like this:

Robert Turek's drone video shows what Quincy was dealing with for days.

It wasn't just the wind, but also the hail that July afternoon. The National Weather Service recorded a hail stone that measured nearly 4 inches in size:

The largest hail stone reported was in Marseilles, IL in LaSalle County, and was estimated to be 3.75" in diameter. where at least damage to some vehicles occurred. This happened around 5:50 pm.

The NWS storm report map shows how widespread the damage was that day.

Despite the fact that we regularly get strong storms that traverse through our area, it's the one time when it was almost literally a hurricane in strength. Here's hoping that we don't see anything like that again anytime soon.