One Million Lost Power in Storm That Spawned Chicago Tornado
The storm has ravaged more than 300 miles of Iowa and northern Illinois, leaving 700,000 homes and businesses without power.
(Bloomberg) -- More than one million homes and businesses lost power across the U.S. Midwest after a wall of lightning, hail and deadly winds ripped through Chicago and elsewhere, tearing apart trees and houses.
The line of storms, 160 miles (257 kilometers) wide, cut a path of destruction across Iowa, Illinois and Indiana Monday. Wind gusts of 100 miles per hour and more were clocked across Iowa, damaging corn crops and knocking down silos. At least one brief tornado formed in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago before heading into Lake Michigan, according to a preliminary report from the National Weather Service.
Most of the outages are in Iowa and Illinois, including about 280,000 in Chicago and its suburbs, according to Exelon Corp.’s Commonwealth Edison. They come on the heels of Tropical Storm Isaias knocking out power to more than 2 million customers on the East Coast, leaving some without power for a week.
Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. and Cargill Inc. crop-processing complexes in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were knocked offline. Heartland Co-op in Iowa said late Monday it had serious damage at 21 locations. “Several locations are rendered inoperable and we are making contingency plans for managing the fall harvest,” the company said in a statement on its website.
Read More: ADM Says Iowa Corn Processing Facility Offline After Storm
Jarod Creed, owner of farm advisory JC Marketing Services LLC in Hudson, Iowa, estimated that as much as 100 million bushels of grain storage space was damaged or ruined in Iowa, and as many as 1.5 million to 2 million acres each of corn and soybeans across the state could be affected.
Kinder Morgan Inc.’s Argo, Illinois, ethanol terminal outside of Chicago, a key hub for the biofuel market, was running on generator power on Tuesday as the local utility worked to restore service.
The storm almost certainly meets the definition of a powerful system known as a derecho, said Rick Otto, a forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
Derechos are characterized by their large size and capacity for destruction. They can scour a landscape with damaging hail, dangerous wind gusts capable of throwing two-by-fours through walls, and even tornadoes.
The storm got its start from thunderstorms and instability in the atmosphere across South Dakota and Nebraska Monday, then picked up strength and began ripping its way through Iowa and beyond.
In recent years, hail has caused from $8 billion to $14 billion a year in insured losses, according to insurance giant Aon Plc.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.