About 60,000 ComEd customers in Chicago were without power Tuesday evening as the city neared 24 hours since powerful storms, which spawned a tornado that cut through Lincolnwood and the Far North Side, the first time one touched down in city limits in two years.
The National Weather Service also confirmed six other tornadoes in Illinois. They occurred in Spring Grove, Marengo, Wheaton and Lombard, plus two in Rockford.
More than 340,000 customers in northern Illinois were without power earlier Tuesday afternoon, said John Schoen, a spokesman for the utility. And although the company already had called in 1,500 workers from out of state to help, there are customers who won’t have power restored until Saturday afternoon, he said.
“Right now we expect to have the vast majority of customers up by Friday,” Schoen said.
In areas “with really significant damage” “a limited number of people” will be without power until Saturday, he said. There had been nearly 900,000 customers out at the peak of outages, with about 180,000 of those in Chicago, according to ComEd.
Northern Indiana Public Service Co., which provides electricity to most of the northern third of the state, at the peak of outages had more than 95,300 customers without power, said spokeswoman Wendy Lussier.
The weather service had put out among its highest threats of severe weather, which ended up displaying its forecasting ability when a tornado hit in Rogers Park, said Brian Leatherwood, a meteorologist.
The storm was different for ComEd because it was a derecho, “an organized and long-lived system of storms producing a family of particularly damaging downbursts,” according to the weather service.
“This storm, we haven’t seen anything like it in years,” Schoen said. “There was a tornado in Rogers Park, who’s ever heard of that?”
The Rogers Park tornado was confirmed using radar, photos and two submitted videos, Leatherwood said — including one taken by Sabina Tuladhar on Birchwood Avenue in East Rogers Park, Leatherwood said.
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A tornado briefly hit the West Side, crossing the Eisenhower Expressway and only doing minor tree damage, on Labor Day in 2018, according to the weather service. Before that, a weak tornado known as a landspout hit near Midway Airport in 2016. A decade before, in September 2006, a tornado touched down in Rogers Park, on the Loyola University campus.
Reached Tuesday morning, Tuladhar said via text message that she has always been fascinated by clouds and lightning.
“Just saw it moving so fast, I thought, let me capture that moment. In a matter of a couple seconds debris started flying. … I haven’t seen anything like that before in my life,” she said.
The Rogers Park tornado first touched down in Lincolnwood and headed east, jumping the North Shore Channel and cutting its way through the Far North Side, eventually petering out over the lake, according to the weather service. At its widest, the F-1 tornado was about 300 yards across, and reached maximum wind speeds of 110 mph.
The tornado cut right through Phillip Rogers Park, 7345 N. Washtenaw Ave. Large trees around the perimeter of the park were flattened. Trees were toppled over wires, house windows were broken and roofs were damaged.
Tuesday afternoon, Brian and Alissa Hacker were in their front yard in the 7300 block of North Campbell Avenue, east of the park, with their two children, who were trying to cut through a branch with small handsaws. Tree limbs damaged their fence, their neighbors to the rear had a damaged roof, and everyone around them lost power.
The storm hit abruptly around 4 p.m. Monday, Alissa Hacker said. She was looking out a window facing the park and trees started falling.
“All the trees started snapping in half,” she said. “It was like a dinosaur was running at us.”
After seeing that, Hacker said she “freaked out and ran to the basement.”
The derecho that produced the tornado swept east from Nebraska, through Iowa and across Illinois into Indiana, with some gusts as high as 92 mph, the weather service reported.
At least one semi-truck blew over in the Peru area as a result of the 60 mph-plus winds, Leatherwood said. One person was reported injured as a result.
Judy Wood Edstrom’s van was hit by a tree that split nearly in half in North Park following a lightning strike. While she was surveying the damage to her parked van, she noticed a small white car near Catalpa and Spaulding avenues, also trapped under the branches. Police and firefighters responded and cut the branches away and people emerged from the car, seemingly unscathed, she said.
Firefighters also responded to numerous fires started by energized power lines, the Fire Department said in a tweet.
In the Logan Square neighborhood, tree branches plummeted onto power lines, cutting power on several blocks south of Diversey Avenue and east of Kedzie Avenue.
In Lombard, more than 200 homes were in some way damaged by winds that exceeded 50 mph at Glenbard East High School, according to a post on Facebook from the village of Lombard.
One such structure was the Sheldon Peck Homestead, the oldest house in Lombard, built in 1839, according to Alison Costanzo, executive director of the Lombard Historical Society. The home, which was restored to its 1839 configuration by the historical society, sustained roof damage and has a tree against the east side of the building, Costanzo said. Officials planned to call for volunteers to help with the cleanup through their social media pages.
“It’s just incredibly mind-boggling, just the amount of damage that the storm did in a short amount of time,” she said.
There also was damage across a wide swath of Joliet after the storm, according to Mike Eulitz, public assets supervisor.
“This damage seems to have covered the entire city,” Eulitz said.
About a third of ComEd customers in La Grange had no power Monday night, but Palmer Place Restaurant in the village’s downtown did. The restaurant posted on Facebook: “If your power is out, come to Palmer’s and bring your phone chargers. Enjoy a drink and some food. We got ya covered.”
For an updated forecast, check the Tribune’s weather page.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the high school where winds were reported in excess of 50 mph. The school is Glenbard East High School.
Pioneer Press reporter Kimberly Fornek contributed.
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