A woman was killed Monday after a severe weather outbreak tore through the entire Chicago area and Northwest Indiana.
Laura Nagel, 44, was killed in Cedar Lake, Indiana after a tree fell on a home during the storm the Lake County Coroner's office said.
An autopsy was pending, the coroner's office said. No further information was available.
Nagel's family released the following statement Tuesday afternoon:
“Laura was the rock of the family. She cared for everyone all while keeping us all in line. She adored Kenny Chesney and going on hikes with her loving fur babies. She just recently achieved a lifelong goal of conquering her fear of heights by going skydiving! She tirelessly provided guidance and support to her beautiful children. She has always striving to be a better version of herself and was still working in that fashion even recently. She will be missed by me as well as her children, siblings, parents, cousins, and coworkers past and present. She will forever be in our hearts.”
Monday evening, the entire Chicago area was under an "moderate" risk of severe weather, which ranks as level four of five on the Storm Prediction Center's severe weather scale. According to NBC 5 Meteorologist Alicia Roman, it's rare that the region gets placed under that category, especially in July.
"The SPC placed us in the level 4 of 5 category – which is a pretty considerable outbreak," Roman said. "To be in a moderate risk, the SPC has to have a high confidence that storms will be severe and turn tornadic. That doesn't always happen."
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Roman noted that Northern Illinois typically gets placed under a "moderate risk" once a year or less.
At one point Monday night, every Chicago area county was under a tornado warning, Roman said, ranging from the suburbs, to the city, to across Northwest Indiana.
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"There's going to be a lot of confirmation of tornadoes," Roman said. "We have to wait for the official confirmation from NWS."
While Tuesday in the Chicago area was set to be calmer and dry, the aftermath from Monday's storm remained.
As of 9 a.m., over 100,000 ComEd customers remained without power, the utility company's outage map showed. The majority of those outages were in Cook County, where more than 90,000 outages were reported. Will County also saw a high number of outages, at more than 45,000.
According to a message posted to ComEd's website, it could take days before power is restored.
Storm aftermath: I-55 remains closed due to downed power lines; Metra train delays
"We know some of you are without power and we appreciate your patience as crews work to restore outages," the message read. "Based on the history of similar storms of this size across the ComEd service area, we expect 80% of outages to be restored by Wednesday, 7/17/24, at 3 p.m., and the remaining customers restored by Friday, 7/19, at 6 p.m."
In Northwest Indiana, approximately 99,000 customers are without power, with the greatest impacts across Chesterton Crown Point, East Chicago, Gary Goshen, Griffith, Hammond, La Porte, Portage and Valparaiso.
"Severe storms overnight brought extremely high winds, rain and tornadic activity across the region, causing elevated electric power outages in our service area," a message on the utility's website said. "Damage includes downed wires and tree limbs and broken poles."
"All available NIPSCO crews are working to assess the damage, make the necessary repairs and restore power as safely and quickly as possible," the message went on to say.
An estimated time of when power would be restored was not provided.
