UPDATED (11 a.m.) — At its peak, which was 9:42 p.m., Ameren Illinois had 19,583 outages throughout the state of Illinois due to Thursday night’s storm.
But after working all night, a spokeswoman for the utility said that number had dropped by 11 a.m. to roughly 3,156.
The storm hit the areas of Peoria, Bloomington Champaign and Quincy the hardest within the state of Illinois. The Chillicothe area had the most outages within Peoria County.
An outage is where someone loses power. Power could be restored to that location and then go out again and it would be counted again as a separate outage, said spokeswoman Stacey Shangraw.
No transformers were destroyed due the storm and downed powerlines were the main culprit to the outages. In all, 36 poles had to be replaced.
Shangraw said she believed power would be restored to all customers by 6 p.m. Friday
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UPDATED (7:30 a.m. June 14) — Working throughout the night, Ameren crews brought thousands of customers back online after a line of storms wrecked havoc on the area.
By 7:30 a.m. just under 2,300 people remained without power in Peoria County, mostly in the Chillicothe-Rome area. Closer to the city proper, there were about 350 people without power.
In McLean County, there were about 600 customers off line, down from more than 2,200, according to the outage map.
That’s down from a high of nearly 11,000 customers late Thursday night.
“Additional resources will be brought in Friday to assist with restoration efforts,” said Ameren spokesman Brian Bretsch.
This story will be updated.
UPDATED: (11:15 p.m. June 13) — There are nearly 11,000 customers without power in Peoria and McLean Counties.
To put that number into perspective, there are a total of 14,000 or so customers without power statewide, according to the Ameren Illinois outage map.
Roughly 8,500 customers are without power in Peoria County and about 2,200 are without power in McLean County after a line of severe storms that went through the late Thursday afternoon that downed powerlines and broke off tree limbs.
In the city of Peoria, firefighters were busy responding to calls about powerlines arcing. In the Rolling Acres neighborhood, one line on Ronald Street was down and caused several fire trucks to race there on a report of a house fire.
It wasn’t but there was a line down, said a battalion chief with the department later in the evening,
Within Peoria County, the hardest hit area, when it came to outages, was near Chillicothe where several thousand people were without power.
This story will be updated.
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UPDATED: (9:20 p.m.) — More than 8,000 customers were without power Thursday in Peoria County and more than 2,000 were without power in McLean County according to the Ameren Illinois outage map.
A line of severe storms that went through the late Thursday afternoon and into the evening downed powerlines, knocked down trees and resulted in several outages.
The Chillicothe area had several outages with hundreds of people without service as of 9:15 p.m. Within the city of Peoria and the communities immediately surrounding it, there were more than 2,000 people without power.
Tazewell County had less than 100 while Woodford County was around 250 customers.
Down the road in McLean County, about 2,100 customers were reportedly without power.
This story will be updated.
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PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — Severe weather was expected to hit central Illinois late Thursday afternoon and into the evening with the chance for strong winds, hail and a possible tornado in some areas.
The National Weather Service in Lincoln reported that storms coming from Missouri and Iowa could pose a threat for “damaging winds gusts, large hail, and a few tornadoes are possible. Heavy rain rates could result in localized rainfall amounts over 5 inches, which could lead to flash flooding, especially in urban areas.”
WMBD’s Molly Naslund said the storms will impact most of the western half of central Illinois. Now is the time to have a severe weather plan and several ways to receive alerts. She said 2-inch hail is possible as are winds of 70 mph and stronger are possible.
A severe thunderstorm watch for areas along and west of the Illinois River will remain in place until 10 p.m. A severe thunderstorm watch indicates conditions are ripe for a tornado to occur. A warning means a storm has been seen or detected by radar.
WMBD/WYZZ and CIPROUD.COM are staying on top of all the weather news. To check for outages on the Ameren Illinois Outage map, click here.
