Overnight storms leave flooding, damage across Illinois with another round of storms on deck Thursday
Residents across Illinois are waking up to storm damage and flooding on Wednesday morning after severe weather overnight.
Video from Pearl City, in Stephenson County in northwest Illinois about two hours west of Chicago, shows a large tree uprooted in a neighborhood. This area was hit hardest by the storms.
The Pearl City fire chief there said they were assessing downed trees and power lines.
One neighbor told CBS News Chicago she received tornado warnings on her phone and took cover.
"We went to the basement, the wind blew, so we came out, and we saw the tree was down and trees over there," Deb Holmes said. "A lot of mess."
Closer to Chicago in Elgin, Illinois, a massive downed tree hit power lines a residential street near Chicago Street and Worth Avenue. CBS News crews captured a tree that also fell onto a car parked in front of a house. That tree has since been removed along with the debris.
No injuries were reported.
"I had no idea that we were getting winds strong enough to do this kind of damage," said Elgin resident Gary Kunold.
Some neighbors told CBS News Chicago they slept through most of the wind and rain, but such storms often leave them bracing for the aftermath once daylight hits.
"There are large old trees, and when we get storms with high winds, it's not uncommon in this general Washington Heights neighborhood of Elgin that we get trees or lots of limbs down," Kunold said.
In Chicago, roadways were flooded. Metra said the passenger tunnel at its Forest Glen stop, on the city's Northwest Side, is closed due to flooding and riders should use the street entrance to access trains instead.
Photos on social media showed the DuSable Lake Shore Drive underpass at Waveland Avenue was inundated with rain. At Irving Park Road at Ravenswood Avenue, where the east-west thoroughfare dips to go under the Union Pacific North Metra tracks, a photo showed water deep enough to stall out a car.
On the Edens Expressway near Pratt Avenue in Lincolnwood, some drivers were left stranded, and a man was seen climbing out of a stalled car.
Tow trucks were deployed on the expressway to clear multiple stalled cars that were submerged in water.
More severe weather is expected on Wednesday. A flood watch remains in effect until Thursday at 1 a.m.
