Torrential rains on Sunday blanketed parts of the Chicago area, leaving in its wake flooded roadways, submerged basements, overloaded sewers and water spewing in the air from maintenance holes in the street.

The total rainfall — up to nearly 5 inches — fell so fast and heavy at times that it was more akin to downpour rates seen in tropical storm systems, a National Weather Service meteorologist said.

Sunday’s rain, which overwhelmed city infrastructure and damaged hundreds of homes, marked another extreme weather event that continues to raise concerns about the impact of climate change and our preparedness.

“We are expecting to see more extreme events and heavy rain at times we haven’t had it before, like in the winter,” said Aaron Packman, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University. “Our infrastructure was not really built for this.”

Water pouring from overpasses onto expressways and bursting geyser-like from breached maintenance hole covers were among the dramatic images circulating on social media after several inches of rain fell in a short span.

On Monday, Chicagoans began the cleanup, while some roadways remained wet and mud-caked. Chicago Public Schools said in a statement that it is assessing damage to some schools, most on the North or Northwest Side.

In Albany Park, Anthony Perez scooped branches into a debris-filled truck bed at an intersection where, according to videos circulating on social media, a stream of water as high as an apartment building was launched from a sewer in the submerged street on Sunday.

“I’ve never seen this,” said Perez, who landscapes for a nearby building. “It’s so bad.”

Fast-falling rain

The Chicago area saw 2.5 to 4.5 inches of rainfall throughout the city and suburbs, with the North Side of experiencing much of the rainfall, said Todd Kluber, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

In Chicago, the West Ridge neighborhood cataloged the most with about 4.25 inches.Just under 2 inches were measured at O’Hare.

The rain fell especially fast, making it difficult for the ground to absorb it, Kluber said. Parts of the city saw rainfall at a rate of 6 to 8 inches per hour.

“We get those rates up here, but it’s not as common,” he said.

For some Chicagoans, water flooded their homes, damaging basements and other parts of the residence.

At a Ravenswood coffee shop, ankle-deep water pooled up from a drain and through a back door, said Groundswell Coffee Roasters barista Michael Sprenger. The shop was closed by 9:30 a.m. Sunday, he said.

Holly Springer’s Lincoln Square basement was submerged in about 3 feet of water at one point during the storm.

“You could see water coming in through the crack in the door,” Springer said.

Then the water pushed the door open.

“It came in a huge gush and pushed our shelving back,” she said.

She ran her nervous kids to a neighbor’s house. The water kept rising, stair by stair. Everything was in the wrong spot, including the floating beer fridge, Springer said.

The damage to her house and belongings will cost a lot of money, she said, but the worst part is the ruined heirlooms.

“The things that you can’t replace are old family photos,” she said.

Ravenswood resident Maureen Ryan also saw her basement flood. The water seeped under the back door despite a weather-ready yard complete with trees, green space, permeable pavers and a just-cleaned drain.

“So what’s the solution? I think nobody has an answer to how do you keep water from coming indoors,” she said.

As of Monday afternoon, more than 1,900 service requests were made following the flooding that began the previous day, city data showed.

More than 1,570 calls were about flooded basements; another 327 were about streets underwater. Seven flooded viaducts were also reported.

A Tribune analysis showed the service requests were heavily concentrated on the North Side.

Cleanup crews were slammed with calls throughout Monday, while insurance companies faced mounting claims.

State Farm had received 640 water loss claims due to the storm as of Monday morning, 600 of which came from homeowners, according to a spokesperson. The highest concentration of claims came from Cook County, the insurance company said.

The company noted that most homeowner insurance policies don’t cover flood damage, though homeowners can buy flood insurance through the FEMA-managed National Flood Insurance Program.

One company that does flood cleanup for homes reported that crews had been called to more than 500 homes in the last 36 hours. Another said crews would likely be working nonstop until Monday evening.

Tim Lohse, co-owner of a PuroClean location in Chicago, said the company received more than 50 calls on Sunday and were experiencing the same volume on Monday. Lohse said the calls have mostly been for flooded basements, but they also have had service requests for roof leaks. Most of the calls have been from the North Side.

“We usually end up with this type of thing once or twice a year, usually in the spring,” Lohse said. “The good news is power didn’t go out. If power went out, it would have been more widespread.”

‘It was 30 feet’

The rapid flooding of city streets and the sewers that gushed water raised questions about the infrastructure and its ability to handle heavy rains. In particular, sewers that spewed massive spouts of water captured the attention of residents who filmed and posted videos to social media.

Jon Heupel was driving to buy a pump to handle the 8 inches of sewer backup flooding his Lincoln Square basement when he passed by Diversey River Bowl. All of a sudden, he saw water shooting into the air, cresting above the bowling alley’s towering sign.

“It was 30 feet, probably at least,” Heupel said.

He, like many across the city, did the only thing he could do: film the natural spectacle and post the video online. The water had almost completely drained at home by the time he got back, though not before it soaked drywall and inundated a furnace.

“This is going to last for weeks,” he said.

The Chicago Department of Water Management, which maintains the sewer system, said in a statement that water “temporarily” pools on the streets because of inlet control valves that are meant to slow the amount of water rushing into the system during heavy rains. These catch basins serve to prevent backups in basements.

Water department spokeswoman Megan Vidis said in a statement that the agency has replaced and lined more than 700 miles of the system in the last decade to ensure “peak efficiency” but acknowledged Sunday’s rainfall was extreme.

“Unprecedented rainfall events like the one last weekend which dumped approximately 4 inches of rain in two hours on parts of the city require time for the sewer system to process,” Vidis wrote.

The Department of Water Management also said there were “rare geyser” effects spotted because of deep tunnel dropshafts that come with the air vents. Those vents spew out air during heavy storms, but sometimes intense rainfall traps the air and leads to the appearance of geysers.

The region has a tunnel and reservoir system to handle excess flows of water, improve water quality and protect Lake Michigan from backed-up sewers. The system, managed by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, is made up of 110 miles of tunnels and three reservoirs.

An MWRD spokesperson said the McCook Reservoir along with its tunnel systems, which serve Chicago and 36 suburbs, was at 80% capacity as of Monday morning.

Reached Monday afternoon, Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, said the city’s sewer system was overwhelmed. Intake restrictor valves, intended to slow down the amount of water going into city pipes to avoid basement backups worked, but led to street overflows that meant water made it into basements anyway.

“Because it was holding the water up and the rain was coming down so quickly, it was getting higher than the curb and seeping into buildings, into basements, just from the street,” Vasquez said.

Viaducts underneath the Metra tracks adjacent to Ravenswood Avenue were also flooded, local aldermen said.

Some vehicles were abandoned in other intersections where water was too high, Vasquez said, and some were still there after water and debris were cleared. “Midway through the day I was driving around the ward with a rake” to clear storm drains of leaves and muck, he said.

Nearby, Ald. Samantha Nugent in the 39th Ward said she donned her wellington boots Sunday and rode around the ward in a pickup truck to assess damage and help neighbors.

“It was one of the worst weather incidents I’ve seen in the past four years,” Nugent, a former chief of staff at Cook County’s then-Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, told the Tribune. “I had several viaducts that were flooded, the 17th police district was responding, pulling motorists out of vehicles … multiple homeowners calling with flooded basements.”

Nugent and Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, fielded calls from constituents with flooded basements, and encouraged those who might have to throw away damaged goods en masse to arrange special garbage pickups with their aldermanic office.

The storm says more about climate change than the state of the city’s infrastructure, several aldermen said. The city should explore so-called smart sewers to monitor water flow and add native plants to parkways to help absorb more water, Vasquez said. It’s going to “require a lot of investment at the federal level, the amount of money we’re talking about, to reimagine and refine our sewer systems.”

“What about ongoing water main replacement work, is that infrastructure that’s supposed to be there for 10 years adequate to meet the increasing challenges in terms of climate change?” Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, said. “Permeability is such a huge, huge one: making sure we’re not only maintaining but expanding green spaces, our tree canopy.”

Rodriguez Sanchez agreed, saying Sunday’s weather highlighted the need for a Department of the Environment to help manage and mitigate future emergencies.

The city’s 2022 climate action plan needs “someone steering the wheel,” Rodriguez Sanchez said. “That needs to come from the Department of Environment, a department that’s funded, resourced and operational.”

Packman, director of the Northwestern Center for Water Research, said we can continue to expect “more intense storms” due to climate change.

It can be difficult and expensive for cities to adapt old infrastructure, but Packman said efforts creating more green space, such as parks and rain gardens, to absorb water can make a small difference. A Chicago-based consortium also recently won a $25 million five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study urban climate change in Chicago.

“You build your infrastructure based on historical conditions and when things change, your infrastructure is not designed for this,” he said.

Chicago Tribune’s Tracy Swartz contributed.