Severe weather pounds Illinois and Indiana, knocking out power as tornado warning sirens blare

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CHICAGO (AP) — Severe weather cut power to over half a million people in the Chicago area and northwestern Indiana as perilous rainstorms and extreme wind gusts pummeled the region on Tuesday.

Tornado warning sirens howled as the skies darkened. All flights were temporarily stopped at Chicago’s two major airports, and officials warned about delays as the backlog is cleared.

Photos posted on social media showed flooded roads, trees tangled in power lines and homes with gashes in the roof.

“No power. It was very scary. We were down in the basement,” Javid Jenkins in Homewood, a Chicago suburb, said. “We’re built for snow. We’re built for cold. We’re not built for this.”

Jenkins, 54, said he was driving around for gas to fire up a generator to preserve food in his refrigerator.

There were numerous reports of wind gusts of 80 mph (128 kph) or more at personal weather stations.

“These are dangerous storms!” the National Weather Service warned in a post on social media.

More than 600,000 customers lost electricity in Illinois and Indiana, according to poweroutage.us. Lake and Porter counties in Indiana, and Will County, Illinois, south of Chicago, were especially hit hard. Further east in Ohio, more than 166,000 customers were without power.

Officials in Columbus, Ohio, sent local government workers home early ahead of another round of storms. The library in Westerville, Ohio, was forced to close when rain poured into the atrium.