More than 400 flight delays have been reported at O’Hare and Midway early Wednesday as thunderstorms move through the Chicago area.
A ground delay went into effect around 5 a.m. at O’Hare and was expected to last most of the day due to the storms, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The average delay at O’Hare was slightly over two hours.
As of 8:00 a.m., 404 flights were delayed at O’Hare and 103 were canceled, according to FlightAware. At Midway, 54 flights were delayed and 29 more were canceled.
Over 1,300 ComEd customers in the Chicago area were without power Wednesday morning, according to a ComEd outage map. Roughly 200 Chicago customers were impacted by the outages, while nearly 700 customers in southern suburbs including South Holland, Calumet City, Tinley Park and Chicago Ridge.
Wednesday’s early morning storms could give way to a stronger wave of storms into the afternoon that may bring damaging winds over 60 miles per hour, hail and tornadoes, the National Weather Service said.
Areas near and south of the Stevenson Expressway may experience the worst of the storms, which are expected to move in from Iowa as the day progresses, according to Jake Petr, a meteorologist with the weather service.
For those needing to commute during the severe weather, Petr recommends having wireless emergency alerts turned on in case any severe weather warnings are issued and urged commuters to stay off of expressways and know of a place to seek shelter if needed.
“Otherwise, it’d probably be safest to ride [the storms] out until it passes through,” Petr said.
Temperatures Wednesday were expected to be in the mid-60s near Lake Michigan and closer to 70 degrees near O’Hare, according to the weather service.
Check back for details on this developing story.
