Tornadoes were reported in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin on Thursday as intense storms swept across the Midwest. Chicago was under a severe thunderstorm warning late Thursday, with strong winds and hail expected.
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.
The tornado caused some damage in Streator, Ill., the Illinois State Police said on social media Thursday evening, and a state highway was closed. There were no reports of injuries, and the extent of the damage the storm left behind was not immediately known.
A “damaging tornado” was on the ground near Hebron, Ind., southeast of Chicago in Porter County, around 9 p.m. Eastern time, the Weather Service said. The Porter County Sheriff’s Office urged residents on social media late Thursday to stay off the roads because of tornado activity.
A tornado, part of the same storm system, was also observed on Thursday night in Wisconsin’s Kenosha County, said Denny VanCleve, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.
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 evening, but forecasters had warned that the greatest potential risk was near the Great Lakes.
There were no widespread reports of damage as the storms produced tornadoes, powerful winds, heavy rain and hail. More than 560,000 homes and businesses across the region were without power in the early hours of Friday, according to Poweroutage.com, which tracks utilities. Many of the outages had lingered from earlier rounds of severe weather on Wednesday night.
The severe weather risk led to the cancellation of several events in the Chicago area, including the 45th Annual Fiestas Patronales Puertorriqueñas in Chicago’s Humboldt Park, which canceled activities Thursday. A scheduled performance by the rock band Jimmy Eat World at Huntington Park Pavilion on Thursday evening was also rescheduled, and the White Sox postponed their home M.L.B. game against the Atlanta Braves.
The forecast for severe storms stretched to the East Coast and into New England. In Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh International Airport lost power for 90 minutes after what officials there called an “extraordinary” energy surge.
How to prepare
Mark Walker and John Yoon contributed reporting.
The post Tornadoes Are Reported as Storms Sweep the Midwest appeared first on New York Times.
