Severe storms and multiple tornadoes wreaked havoc across the Midwest Monday night into Tuesday morning, leaving more than 500,000 energy customers without power and raising concerns about lingering flood risks.
According to PowerOutage.us, nearly 330,000 energy connections were down in Illinois, 188,000 in Indiana and nearly 20,000 in Iowa.
The National Weather Service in Chicago said: “This storm is producing multiple tornadoes at the same time!” A tornado was confirmed in Des Moines, Iowa.
Around 10:30 p.m., the storm passed and the Chicago Weather Bureau team had to head to shelters
Chicago's O'Hare Airport ordered ground stops and local trains canceled. The weather service said the airport could experience lightning due to possible tornadoes due to some of the strongest storms to hit the area in recent times.
“We haven't seen anything like this in years,” said NBC Meteorologist Kevin Janes in Chicago.
A tornado also touched down in Chicago on Sunday, a relatively rare event: Before Sunday, only six tornadoes had been reported in the past 70 years, meteorologist Paul Dino said.
The Chicago Fire Department warned that multiple live power lines had been downed and urged people not to approach them because they may be charging on wet ground. The department posted on X that there were no reports of injuries.
Weather observers in Oswego, west of Chicago, captured footage of a giant funnel cloud just after 10 p.m. Monday night. The weather service later confirmed tornadoes there and in Sugar Grove, moving toward Aurora.
Video posted on social media showed sirens blaring in downtown Chicago, heavy rain falling and lightning striking trees in the southern suburb of Mokena.
Hart Turner posted a video on TikTok overlooking the Chicago skyline from his apartment, saying: “This is the scariest wind I've ever heard in Chicago. Oh my God, my heart is still Jumping wildly.
Joliet police warned that power lines and trees were down and many roads were blocked. Motorists are urged to “exercise extreme caution”.
Severe weather will move south into the central Plains, Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley Tuesday night.
The weather service said the storm was caused by a cold air mass from Canada meeting a heat dome, which has brought extreme temperatures to much of the upper 48 states in recent weeks.
However, the hot weather is about to ease: “A cool and pleasant air mass will cover the northern plains by Wednesday with temperatures as high as 70 degrees,” the weather service said.
Meanwhile, eight days after Hurricane Beryl made landfall, nearly 150,000 people in Texas are still without power, most of them in the greater Houston area.
Regional energy provider Centerpoint said it had repaired 2 million outages and expected 98% of them to be reconnected by the end of Wednesday. In the sweltering heat, locals slept in their cars and sold their valuables to survive the power outage.
Over the weekend, Texas Governor Greg Abbott gave the company until the end of the month to provide details on how to improve future preparedness policies.
