Chicago Weather: Severe storms, toppled trees leave damage across city, suburbs
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Powerful storms moved through the Chicago area Friday night, bringing heavy rains that sparked threats of flash flooding.
Friday was deemed an AccuWeather Alert Day due to the potential severity of storms.
The storms Friday night brought down trees, hitting cars on the North Side and toppling onto houses in the suburbs.
A homeowner in northwest suburban Park Ridge found part of a tree on his home.
"Right after the rain started coming down real hard, I was sitting in the living room. I heard a loud crash and saw these branches hitting the windows and half of a tree now sitting on my house," said resident Jeff Walters.
Gusty winds ripped down power lines in Sleepy Hollow, while lightning struck a house in Wilmette. Bricks crumbled to the ground, but there are no reports of any injuries.
"I was in the basement on a phone call and our kids were playing video games and all of a sudden, we heard a big loud boom" said homeowner Ben Currie.
Wilmette Fire Department Battalion Chief Ryan Menzies said the lighting "blew out the backside of the chimney."
"It also looks like it struck the tree a little bit in the back," Menzies said.
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The heavy rain emptied streets in downtown Naperville for the first night of Phase 4 of Gov. JB Pritzker's reopening plan.
Chicago is currently cleaning up from the damage.
After the storms moved through, a rainbow decorated the sky.
As of around 4 p.m., more than 1,000 ComEd customers were without power, the utility said. Most of the outages are located around Elgin.
