CHICAGO — The National Weather Service confirmed at least eight tornadoes touched down across the Midwest in the past two days — including at least one EF-1 tornado in downtown Chicago.
Severe storms battered Chicago and the surrounding area throughout Sunday and Monday night, with tornado sirens blaring across the city.
On Monday night, the NWS issued at least 16 tornado warnings for the region, the most in a single day since April 2004. The agency estimated that it would take several days to analyze the reported tornado areas and identify at least 29 potential tracks. .
Storms hit areas around O’Hare and Midway airports, prompting hundreds of travelers to stay there. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, some people, like Justin Smolensky, got their planes stuck on the runway or at the gates when the air traffic control tower was evacuated following tornado warnings.
“It felt like chaos on the ground,” Smolensky told NBC News. “I think airplanes are better built than I thought because I was waiting for the runway to split. My kids were scared.”
Winds up to 70 mph uprooted trees, overturned semi trucks and downed industrial power lines in Illinois, utility company ComEd said. Some lanes were closed across the I-55 freeway, with cars and trucks stuck between them, forcing a portion of the freeway to be closed.
A 44-year-old woman died after a tree fell on her home in Cedar Lake, Indiana.
Power outages initially affected more than 400,000 people, with nearly 150,000 still without power as of Tuesday evening. ComEd said it hoped to restore most power by Wednesday, but warned it could take until Friday for some residents.
Brett Shelane, of Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, said he’s never lost power in the three years he’s lived in the neighborhood. But after seeing a neighbor’s car nearly destroyed by a tree in Sunday night’s storm and her children staying in the basement for two consecutive nights, she feels grateful that the only damage to their home was a power outage.
“We’ve had bad thunderstorms, but nothing like this. I happened to look at my phone and it said a tornado warning, so we went to the basement very quickly,” Shelane told NBC News. “We heard strong winds and sirens going off, so we two We waited in the basement all night.”
As cleanup continued across the region on Tuesday, a dam in Nashville, Illinois, failed due to rising stormwater. Local authorities ordered the immediate evacuation of around 300 people in the flooded area near the Nagar Reservoir.
