CHICAGO — The city is under a tornado watch Thursday, the day after a powerful storm downed trees and power lines across Chicago.
The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch through 9 p.m. Thursday for most of Northern Illinois and including the entire Chicago area. The service said there could be winds of up to 80 mph, hail and flash flooding in two separate rounds of storms.
Following an earlier band of thunderstorms, the next line of storms is expected around 7 p.m. They should begin moving away from the city around 9 or 10 p.m. and die down over Indiana and Michigan, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Melissa Constanzer told Block Club.
The brief instance of sunshine between the lines of storms could strengthen the second round, potentially bringing dangerous conditions to the area, Constanzer said. Tornadoes, if they do touch down, could be classified as EF-2, roughly a 3 out of 5 on the strength scale, the weather service reported.
“We are getting a few breaks of sunshine starting to work through, and that spells out some trouble for us because it means that these thunderstorms coming in from the west, from Iowa and western Illinois, can actually use that sunlight … as some sort of fuel,” she said.
A flood watch has also been issued through 11 p.m. Thursday., with rains expected to bring from one to three inches of rainfall per hour, according to the weather service.
Chicago received roughly a quarter-inch of rainfall during the first set of storms Thursday, Constanzer said.
A tree was toppled by severe thunderstorms in Chicago Wednesday. Credit: Colin Boyle/ Block Club Chicago
Thursday Threat Comes As City Cleans Up From Earlier Storms
The dire forecast follows a large cold front that quickly moved through the Chicago area Wednesday afternoon, producing a short yet violent burst of thunderstorms. Wind gusts hit over 70 mph in some areas, the weather service said.
Wednesday’s storm downed power lines and toppled trees throughout the city, leaving many without power and causing windows and patio furniture to come crashing down from highrises.
The city has received more than 5,000 reports of downed trees and other storm-related hazards following Wednesday’s extreme weather, said Ryan Gage, spokesperson for the Department of Streets and Sanitation.
“Crews have been deployed citywide and are working diligently to clear streets and restore safe passage as quickly as possible,” Gage said.
RELATED: 70 MPH Wind Gusts Leave Path Of Destruction Through Chicago
ComEd spokesperson Anthony Garcia said nearly 180,000 customers in Chicago lost power, with nearly 60,000 still without service as of 2 p.m. Thursday.
Across the region, about 140,000 customers were still without power, Garcia said. A total of 480,000 customers lost power during the storms. ComEd said that the company estimated that 80 percent of outages would be restored by 11 p.m. Saturday.
Wednesday’s system was classified as a derecho, or a sustained wind-storm carrying a line of fast-moving thunderstorms across hundreds of miles, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Lenning.
Much of the damage seen across the city was caused by “micro-bursts” of wind, where residents saw short-lived, localized wind-gusts as strong as 85 mph as recorded at a weather station over Lake Michigan near Navy Pier, according to Lenning.
One of the blocks impacted by micro-burst activity was the 2900 block of South Quinn Street in Bridgeport, where Tim Harris reported two uprooted trees, another two trees snapped in half and several fallen branches.
“It all happened within two minutes,” he said. “Suddenly the wind got way stronger, it was really insane. I heard a crack in front of my house, and saw a branch from our tree snapped off, lifted over our neighbor’s car, and settled on the sidewalk, and the next time I checked outside, I saw everything else.”
A downed tree after storms June 10, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Across the street from Harris, a 100-year-old tree was uprooted and picked up the sidewalk with it, exposing a gas line in the process. A tree had snapped a few houses down the block, shattering two windows on Harris’s parents’ and mother in law’s duplex.
One of the fallen trees also crushed a car parked on South Quinn Street and a home further down the block, taking down a power line and separating a street lamp from its post. No one was injured in the carnage. The street remained inaccessible to car traffic due to the trees in the street as of Thursday afternoon.
“I tried reporting this to the city but got a ‘all circuits are busy’ response on the other line,” Harris said. “We ended up calling up some people we know in Ald. Lee’s office and they were able to get us in contact with someone from the Department of Streets and Sanitation, who came through and told us that this was the worst damage they’ve seen in the neighborhood.”
In the South Loop, wind gusts shattered at least 20 windows on the facade of a large apartment building at 1717 N. Michigan Ave. Only the outside pane of the building’s two-paneled windows were impacted by the storm, which protected residents from the elements, a property manager who declined to give her name told Block Club.
“It was really crazy,” she said Thursday. “We’ve never had anything like this before. We’ve had contractors take a look at the windows today, and we still don’t really know why it happened.”
Hannah, a resident in the building who declined to give her last name, said that her apartment had a clear view of much of the damage.
“I saw the aftermath of the storm and was shocked,” she said. “Just a bunch of shattered glass. We were just feeling the wind blow consistently for a while, but I didn’t think anything was wrong until I looked outside.”
With the threat of more severe weather looming Thursday evening, the National Weather Service’s Lenning made the distinction between Wednesday’s derecho system and Thursday’s possible supercell activity: Derechos are straight line systems that move over hundreds of miles while supercells are rotating, localized thunderstorms that can create tornadoes, he said.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
