Tornadoes were reported in Illinois on Thursday afternoon as intense storms swept across the Midwest, and forecasters warned that more were likely through the evening.
The National Weather Service briefly declared a tornado emergency near Peoria, Ill., shortly after 5 p.m. local time, an extraordinarily rare type of alert it uses when a large, potentially destructive tornado is on the ground.
There were no immediate reports of widespread damage from the tornado that prompted that emergency, which included the towns of La Rose, Toluca and Wenona in Illinois.
A steady drumbeat of tornado warnings were issued in the region starting in the early afternoon, and reports of strong winds and hail also flooded in from Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri.
Tens of millions of people from Texas to the East Coast live in areas where severe weather — hail, heavy rain, destructive winds or tornadoes — could develop during through Thursday afternoon and evening, but forecasters had warned that the greatest potential risk was near the Great Lakes.
Late Thursday morning, meteorologists at the Storm Prediction Center warned the forecast for Chicago, especially, had become more severe.
There were no widespread reports of damage as the storms produced tornadoes, powerful winds, heavy rain and hail. More than 200,000 homes and businesses across the region were without power as of early afternoon, according to Poweroutage.com, which tracks utilities. Many of the outages had lingered from earlier rounds of severe weather on Wednesday night.
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