Thousands of Chicago-area residents were left without power Tuesday night after another round of damaging storms pounded northern Illinois.
Just before 9:30 p.m., ComEd reported nearly 14,000 customers with outages across Cook and DuPage Counties. By 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, more than 4,000 outages remained.
Cook and DuPage were two of the counties hit the hardest with heavy downpours, as well as Will and Lake; all of which were under a Flash Flood Warning earlier in the evening.
The National Weather Service issued the warning just after 8 p.m. as severe storm systems produced up to of 3 inches of rainfall in the areas in just under an hour.
Throughout the day, a Tornado Watch was in effect for the entire Chicago area until 10 p.m. A Tornado Warning was issued for DuPage County that expired at 8:25 p.m. and previously in Will County until 7:45 p.m. Residents were temporarily urged to seek shelter, take cover and remain indoors.
Just after 5 p.m., NWS confirmed an observed tornado in Livingston County. A funnel cloud was spotted near Pontiac moving northeast at 20 miles per hour.
Strong winds during the storm system blew in excess of 60 mph with rapid lightning and some light hail. The lightning, while scattered, was evident, and as threatening as the thunder that came with it.
It was an especially scary night for some in the area, like Andrea Glass who works at Aurora’s Rush-Copley Medical Center.
“We were calling Code Black,” Glass said. “We shut windows and doors and if bad, move patients into hallways.”
Local
The chance of severe weather is expected to continue overnight and into early Wednesday.
It was the second night in a row for severe weather, as summer storms rolled through the Chicago are Monday night as well, with high winds knocking down trees and heavy rain flooding streets.
The threat for storms remains through Wednesday morning with the metropolitan area in a marginal to slight risk for severe weather.
Things look to stay mostly dry Thursday and Friday.
