Severe storm threat on Thursday with flooding risk ahead

More severe weather is hitting the Chicago area on Thursday, following destructive storms that left communities with significant damage this past week. 

Another round of storms is expected to move in by midday and then through the afternoon. 

A Flood Watch is in effect from 7 p.m. Thursday through 10 a.m. Friday.   

The strongest storms remain far south of Chicago, where damaging winds and downpours are possible. 

The bigger concern develops tonight into the weekend. Some areas could pick up over 3 inches of rain and the risk for flooding significantly increases. 

Additional flooding and severe storms are possible through the weekend.

Hundreds of thousands without power in Northwest Indiana 

Nearly 250,000 NIPSCO customers were still without power on Thursday after storms hit Northwest Indiana.   

The communities facing outages were bracing for more storms expected on Thursday. 

Munster, Crown Point, East Chicago, Gary, Griffith, Highland, and Merrillville were among the hardest hit areas, according to the NIPSCO outage map.

NIPSCO said this is the largest and most widespread outage event in the company's history.