The Chicago area is under a flood watch following a weekend of severe thunderstorms and flash flooding throughout the city and suburbs, bringing downed trees and other damage.
The watch, which the National Weather Service issued just before 2:30 p.m. Monday and is in effect until 4 a.m. Tuesday, covers 15 counties in northern Illinois, including Cook, DuPage, Lake, McHenry and Will counties. Flash floods caused by heavy rains are a possibility, weather officials said. The watch also cautioned that heavy thunderstorms with rainfall rates of up to several inches per hour are possible through Monday night.
Just before 7 p.m., storms passed through the city’s South Side and the south suburbs, with a second batch expected to bring up to 2 inches of rain an hour to the west suburbs and ultimately the city by 9 p.m., said Kevin Donofrio, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chicago.
Urbanized areas and areas that received heavy rains over the weekend are most likely to flood, the NWS Chicago posted on X. People in potentially threatened areas can prepare by moving valuable items out of flood-prone areas with poor drainage, such as basements.
Removing debris from storm drains can also help reduce the potential for flooding. Additionally, knowing alternate routes and how to get to higher ground will help flooding be less of a deterrent.
The watch comes as people continue to deal with power outages across the Chicago area following the weekend storms, which caused thousands of Commonwealth Edison customers to lose power. By Monday night, ComEd had restored service to 99% of customers affected by the weekend’s storms but there were still over 300 power outages across Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties as the latest round of storms moved through the area, according to ComEd’s Outage Map.
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Ground stops at Midway and O’Hare international airports also went into effect late Monday afternoon amid storms, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The ground stops were expected to last until 9:30 p.m. at both airports, per the FAA.