Tuesday morning commuters may run into issues as downed trees and power lines from Monday’s storm cause traffic impacts across the Chicago area, from Shorewood to Grant Park.
In Will County, I-55 near Channahon will remain closed for up to 12 hours after “several vehicles” became entangled in downed power lines, the Illinois State Police said. One person transported to the hospital for injuries, ISP added.
A post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, reported heavy backups and delays due to the closure.
On West Polk Street in Chicago, a giant uprooted tree on a sidewalk had crushed a parked car. Near Grant Park, downed power lines had three lanes blocked at Northbound Columbus at Monroe, NBC 5 traffic reporter Kye Martin said.
According to Metra, riders Tuesday morning could expect delays due to storm aftermath, with the Electric Line seeing the biggest impacts.
In Lake County, Indiana, a woman suffered fatal injuries after a tree fell on her house, the Lake County coroner said.
“It’s been years and years since we’ve seen something like this,” NBC 5 Storm Team Meteorologist Kevin Jeanes said late Monday.
Thousands remain without power as NWS set to survey damage sites
As of 6:30 a.m., more than 213,000 ComEd customers remained without power, the utility company’s outage map showed. The majority of those outages were in Cook County, where more than 100,000 outages were reported. Will County also saw a high number of outages, at more than 50,000.
According to a message posted to ComEd’s website, it could take days before power is restored.
“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 all, the Chicago area, which was under a “moderate” risk of severe weather — a level that ranks four of five on the Storm Prediction’s Severe Weather Scale — saw as many as 15 tornado warnings Monday evening, from the suburbs to the city. NBC 5 Meteorologist Alicia Roman noted the widespread warnings and moderate risk was “rare” for July.
“Pretty much every single county had a tornado warning,” Roman said.
According to Roman, the National Weather Service is set to survey more than 20 parts of the Chicago area where damage and possible circulations took place, though the effort could take days.
“There’s going to be a lot of confirmation of tornadoes,” Roman said. “We have to wait for the official confirmation from NWS.”