Severe wind topples power lines, delays travel amid roller-coaster week of weather in Chicago

Cole Rapp and Joey Cleary were on board a Frontier Airlines flight from Austin, Texas, to Chicago when the strong winds buffeting the city turned their four-hour trip for St. Patrick’s Day festivities into a 12-hour adventure.“That was probably the most turbulence I’ve ever felt in my life,” said Cleary, 25. “It was like a roller coaster,” said Rapp, 26, whose hat blew off Friday while speaking to a reporter in Lincoln Park. After two more landing attempts, the flight was diverted and wound up 300 miles away in Cincinnati. Rapp and Cleary were eventually told the next flight to Chicago wasn’t until 4 p.m.They weren’t giving up.“We booked a rental car, ran into [Cleary’s] buddy from high school, packed five people in a car and drove 4½ hours and running on no sleep for St. Paddy’s,” Rapp said. Cole Rapp (left) and Joey Cleary, who tried to fly into Chicago from Austin, Texas, for St. Patrick’s Day, arrive Friday in Lincoln Park. Turbulence prevented their landing at O’Hare, and after being diverted to Cincinnati, they ended up driving here from Ohio.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-TimesThe severe wind came after a week of weather that swung from one extreme to the next. Monday’s record-setting high of 73 degrees at O’Hare Airport came before chillier temperatures Tuesday. Temperatures then rose again Tuesday night as tornadoes swept the area south of the city in its wake.Friday’s gusts, nearing 60 mph, caused disruptions across the city, from power outages to travel delays. There was a brief ground stop at O’Hare, which expired about 7:15 a.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. A high wind warning was in effect for the Chicago area until 4 p.m. as forecasters anticipated gusts surpassing 60 mph.Train service was also affected by the wind. Metra Union Pacific train No. 312 scheduled to depart from Highland Park was running 20 minutes behind schedule due to an obstruction on the tracks. On the CTA Yellow Line, service was temporarily suspended for the same reason.Wind gusts at O’Hare and Midway Airport peaked at 53 and 56 mph, respectively, as of about 5 a.m., the National Weather Service said. Valparaiso Airport in Indiana reported gusts at 63 mph and DuPage Airport reached 62 mph.The strong winds originated from a low pressure system moving toward Lake Michigan from Madison, Wisconsin, where northern Illinois and northwest Indiana are on the southern end of the system, according to Brett Borchardt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service“It’s sort of the same as a severe thunderstorm,” Borchardt said. “It’s a wind strong enough to knock down tree limbs, make driving very difficult and even lead to some power outages.”By Friday night, ComEd was reporting about 1,200 outages. That’s down from more than 30,000 outages earlier in the day, largely centered on the North Side and in the northwest suburbs, according to A spokesperson for ComEd told the Chicago Sun-Times that emergency crews, which helped restore power to customers during severe storms earlier this week, were already in the area and providing assistance. Power was restored to 47,000 customers Friday, according to ComEd. ComEd said customers are being affected “for a number of reasons” related to the wind, from electrical poles being knocked down to tree branches blowing into power lines. The utility company didn’t offer a timeline for when all customers will have their power restored. “It’s not like a thunderstorm, where it passes by. These are ongoing winds through the day,” the ComEd spokesperson said. “We’re just going to keep banging away and getting people restored as quickly as we can.” Lincoln Park resident Paul Fowler’s power went out around midnight and again around 8:15 a.m. before it was restored two hours later. He and several other residents living on Diversey Parkway and Bosworth Avenue said the power rarely goes out in their neighborhood but that the variety in weather isn’t uncommon for Chicago. “This is what happens in the spring. There’s weather fluctuations. It’s cold, it’s warm, there’s wind,” said Fowler, 61. “That’s Chicago.” Borchardt said Saturday looks to be a “break in the action” before another storm system approaches Sunday night. The system could bring severe thunderstorms and snowfall, and temperatures are expected to plummet from the 40s to the 20s Monday and Tuesday, according to the weather service. The wind chill could struggle to get above minus 5 degrees by early next week. “That’s gonna be a storm system that could give us a little bit of everything,” Borchardt said.