CHICAGO — The National Weather Service confirmed that at least eight tornadoes touched down across the Midwest over the past two days, including at least one EF-1 tornado that touched down in downtown Chicago.
A series of severe storms ripped through Chicago and the surrounding area Sunday night and into Monday, sending tornado sirens ringing across the city.
As of Monday night, the NWS issued at least 16 tornado warnings for the region, the most warnings issued in a single day since April 2004. The organization estimates it will take several days to survey the reported tornado areas and identify at least 29 potential paths.
The storm battered areas surrounding O’Hare and Midway airports, forcing hundreds of travelers to evacuate, including Justin Smolenski, who was trapped in his plane on the tarmac or at the gate as tornado warnings were issued and air traffic control towers were evacuated, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
“It felt like turbulence on the ground,” Smolenski told NBC News. “The plane seems to be better built than I thought it would be. We were just waiting for the plane to fall apart on the runway. The kids were scared.”
Power company ComEd said winds up to 70 mph uprooted trees, flipped large trucks and downed industrial power lines in Illinois, including one that fell across I-55, trapping cars and trucks and forcing the closure of part of the highway.
In Cedar Lake, Indiana, a 44-year-old woman was killed when a tree fell on her home.
The outage initially affected more than 400,000 people, and about 150,000 were still without power as of Tuesday evening. ComEd said it hoped to restore most power by Wednesday but warned some residents that it could take until Friday.
Brett Sherane, who lives in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, said he’s never experienced a power outage in the three years he’s lived there, but after a tree nearly destroyed a neighbor’s car during Sunday night’s storm and he had to shelter in his children’s basement for two nights in a row, he’s grateful the only damage to his home was a power outage.
“I’ve been through some pretty bad thunderstorms before, but nothing like this. I happened to look at my phone and saw a tornado warning, so I immediately went to the basement,” Sherane told NBC News. “I could hear the wind and sirens, so I stayed in the basement both nights and waited for the storm to pass.”
Two dams in Nashville, Illinois, burst due to a surge in stormwater on Tuesday as cleanup efforts continued across the region, and local officials ordered the immediate evacuation of about 300 people living in flood zones near the city’s reservoirs.
