Storms with likely tornadoes slap the Chicago area, killing 1 and cutting power

CHICAGO (news agencies) — Storms with reports of tornadoes blew through Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, including the Chicago area, toppling trees and power poles and cutting electricity to hundreds of thousands of people. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell onto a home.

Employees at the National Weather Service in suburban Chicago had to take cover Monday night and pass coverage duties to colleagues in northern Michigan for a time. The agency reported wind speeds in the region as high as 75 mph (120 kph).

“We have a fortified tornado shelter here, luckily, but we did see a pretty nice area of rotation that was heading for the office and then, sure enough, it passed just nearby,” meteorologist Kevin Doom told WLS-TV.

A 44-year-old woman died in Cedar Lake, Indiana, in the southern fringes of the Chicago area, the Lake County coroner’s office said.

There were some tornado reports, but other damaging winds were the main concern, said Roger Edwards, lead forecaster with the weather service’s Storm Prediction Center. There were wind gusts in the 75 mph (120 kph) to 90 mph (145 kph) range and a report of a 101 mph (162 kph) gust in Ogle County, Illinois, Edwards said.

The weather service confirmed a tornado hit Des Moines, Iowa, as storms rolled through Monday afternoon and into the night. Police responded to calls about utility poles that snapped in two.

The storms then moved east into northern Illinois and the Chicago area, which saw tornado warnings and drenching rain. Tornadoes were reported along the line of storms that moved through the city, according to the weather service.

By 8 a.m., 254,000 customers lacked power in Illinois, though the number was much higher hours earlier, according to PowerOutage.us.

The Chicago Fire Department said on the social media site X that there was only one serious injury in the nation’s third-largest city, a person who was hurt when a tree fell on a car.

In Joliet, Illinois, 35 miles (56 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, authorities said many roads were blocked by trees.

Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport reported 81 flight cancellations as of Tuesday morning, and Midway International Airport reported eight cancellations.