Strong winds could bring down trees over parts of Northern Illinois

Three days of high rain totals within the past week and a half have really saturated the ground.  And with strong winds in the forecast for parts of northern Illinois Wednesday night and Thursday, downed trees could become a problem.

This threat may actually be further east of Rockford where wind gusts near 50 mph are expected, but locally weaker and smaller trees could topple with wind gusts reaching 40 mph.  With a very saturated ground, tree roots don't have much to stabilize themselves on.  The soil becomes loose allowing the tree root to break and the tree to fall over.  This tends to happen a little more with trees that are weak or don't have a stable root structure, or trees that already have leaves.  Rainfall totals over the past week have added up anywhere between two and four inches.

I don't expect this to be a major problem locally, but if you do have a weaker tree in your yard it could come down with the stronger winds later Wednesday night or Thursday.