The wave of storms that swept across the Chicago area Thursday dumped 4 inches of rain in parts of McHenry and Lake Counties and knocked down power lines in some of the same areas that were hit by heavy weather earlier this week.
The storm system was blamed for the death early Thursday of a 6-year-old Wilmette girl, who was killed when a tree toppled onto her tent as she was camping with her family in southwestern Wisconsin.
In the Chicago area, the storm disrupted Gay Games events, set off tornado sirens, downed trees and knocked out electricity to thousands of ComEd customers.
“The areas that were hardest hit by Monday night’s storms were affected again today,” ComEd spokesman Tom Stevens said. “The number of customers is significantly less.
“We had 110,000 out of power at the height of Monday’s storms, and we had 33,000 out at the peak of [Thursday’s] storms.”
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The majority of the blackouts were in the company’s north region, Stevens said. Skokie and Crystal Lake were particularly hard hit. By late Thursday, ComEd reported that about 2,200 customers were still without power.
Rich Brumer, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Romeoville, said this week’s waves of storms were about equal in intensity.
Thursday’s storms moved into Rockford and Boone County around 3 a.m., before hitting the northwest suburbs, Chicago and northwest Indiana, Brumer said.
He said 4 inches of rain fell in areas of Boone, McHenry and southwest Lake Counties. The average for the area was about 3 inches, and there were wind gusts of 60 m.p.h., he said.
“Wisconsin really got hit,” Brumer said. “They had 6 inches of rain up near Janesville,” north of Rockford.
Wind snapped off the top of a tree and sent it crashing down onto a Wilmette family’s tent at the Nelson Dewey State Park campground near Cassville, Wis.
Lydia Martin of the 1500 block of Highland Avenue was pronounced dead at 4:10 a.m. in the Grant County Regional Health Center in Lancaster, said Dave Weitz, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
She had been inside a tent with her parents, Charles and Elizabeth Martin, when winds whipped through the area, he said. The crown of a 25-foot-tall oak tree broke off, fell on another tree and then hit the tent, Weitz said. The girl was pinned inside, but her parents managed to escape and shout for help.
Using hatchets, other campers attempted to free the girl before emergency personnel arrived about 3:35 a.m. and took her to the hospital.
In Chicago, nearly 300 “tree emergencies” were reported as of Thursday afternoon, said the city’s Streets and Sanitation Department.
Dangling tree limbs and detached branches were responsible for knocking out 45 traffic lights and knocking down 20 utility pole wires.
By late afternoon, O’Hare International Airport reported average delays of one to two hours, with some flights delayed four hours. More than 150 flights had been canceled. Midway reported similar delays, with more than 20 flights canceled.
In Lake in the Hills, residents may have been startled awake by a tornado siren about 4 a.m., but no twisters were reported.
“We took a lightning strike on one of our tornado warning towers,” said Lake in the Hills Deputy Police Chief Al Bokowski. “The siren went off for about 20 minutes.”
Eight members of an Algonquin family fled their home in the 700 block of Lake Cornish Way about 11 a.m. when lightning struck.
Officials also blamed lightning for damage to a house and garage in Dolton. No one was injured in any of the strikes.
The weather was again a factor in the Gay Games. Track events were canceled and rescheduled for Friday. Tennis matches were moved indoors from Northwestern University in Evanston to the McFetridge Sports Center in Chicago.
Soccer, softball, golf and flag football were delayed–as much as five hours–but eventually completed, said Gay Games spokesman Eric McCool.
Around 10 a.m., tornado sirens at the Oak Park and River Forest High School soccer fields sounded, sending more than 200 Gay Games athletes into the school as a precaution. It was a false alarm and matches resumed around 1 p.m.
Friday and the weekend are expected to have temperatures in the upper 70s and low 80s, according to the weather service.
“Dry, thankfully,” Brumer said. “And cooler too.”
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