Tornadoes and thunderstorms battered the Chicago area on Wednesday, forcing airports to halt air traffic and prompting officials to advise residents to seek shelter as tornado sirens echoed through the third largest US city.
The National Weather Service reported that a tornado touched down near Chicago’s O’Hare international airport on Wednesday evening – one of at least eight tornadoes to hit north-eastern Illinois, including four in Cook county.
“This tornado has been touching the ground intermittently so far and is moving east. There are additional circulations along the line south of O’Hare.
Seek shelter if in the warned area,” it said, before reporting less than an hour later that the area was tornado free.
There were no immediate reports of injuries but the storms forced authorities to ground all departures of commercial flights into O’Hare and Midway airports, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.
More than 300 flights in and out of O’Hare and another 32 in and out of Midway were canceled, according to FlightAware, while hundreds of people sought shelter at O’Hare.
Lynn Becker, a longtime Chicago resident, posted video to Twitter with the sirens sounding out across the city’s skyline.