A fast-moving windstorm tore across the Midwest on Aug. 11, and by Tuesday night it had killed at least three people and cut power to more than a million customers across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois [1]. In Gary, Indiana, instruments clocked a 99 mph gust [2].
The dead are three, in three states, and each death has a specific cause in the record. In Jennings County, Indiana, a 4-year-old boy was killed Tuesday afternoon when a tree fell on his family's mobile home [1]. In Roseville, Ohio, one person died during a health emergency after crews were unable to reach them on flooded roads [1]. In Portage, Indiana, at least one person was killed in a house explosion, and officials are still determining the exact cause and whether it was related to the storm, so that death is recorded here as weather-related only pending their finding [1]. The national account also reported 16 people hospitalized after lightning struck a state prison [1].
The National Weather Service confirmed at least three tornadoes in Chicago's south suburbs, each rated EF-1 on early damage surveys: one in eastern Will County near Monee and Crete, one in southern Cook County near Oak Forest and Flossmoor, and one in northeast Will County near Mokena [2]. Survey ratings are the weather service's first read of the damage and can be revised as more of it is examined. Peak straight-line gusts elsewhere reached 97 mph at Sugar Grove and 96 at Shorewood, with the broader storm line carrying winds the service put as high as 115 mph [2].
Storms like this are often called a derecho, a term for a widespread, long-lived windstorm that travels hundreds of miles along a line of severe thunderstorms and does its damage through straight-line wind rather than rotation. Neither fetched report attributes a formal derecho designation from the Storm Prediction Center; the national account instead described a "ring of fire" pattern, in which a large dome of high pressure pushes thunderstorms around its edges [1]. What is not in question is the scale of the wind and what it did.
The outage numbers are large and, across the two accounts, not identical. The national tally put customers without power at more than 220,000 in Ohio, more than 450,000 in Indiana, and more than 450,000 in Illinois, which add to more than 1.1 million across the three states [1]. The Chicago account reported a higher Illinois peak, more than 1.45 million ComEd customers losing power at the storm's worst [2]. The gap is the difference between a snapshot and a peak, and this desk reports both rather than splitting them.
The cleanup will outlast the headlines. A 4-year-old is dead, a cause of death in Portage is still being worked out, and more than a million meters went dark in an afternoon. The tornado ratings may change as surveyors finish their work; the human cost already counted will not.
