- Passengers at Chicago O’Hare were stuck on grounded planes last night
- Heavy rain and a tornado forced the international airport to a standstill
- The US has been plagued by bad weather for weeks
Passengers trying to leave Chicago’s O’Hare airport last night were stranded due to severe storms and a tornado warning.
Videos posted on social media showed planes being rocked by the tornado. Lightning could be seen in the night sky as heavy rain fell.
Last night, the National Weather Service spotted as many as ten tornadoes simultaneously in the Windy City metropolitan area, with one of them racing toward the international airport.
The storm was so severe that an order was issued to stay indoors. Passengers in the terminal building were ordered away from the windows and others were ordered underground.
But passengers already on outbound flights could do little but watch and wait in fear. According to FlightAware, more than 60 flights were canceled and more than 400 were delayed at O’Hare alone.
Passengers were stuck in planes on the runway at Chicago O’Hare last night
Last night, as many as ten simultaneous tornadoes were observed in the Windy City metropolitan area by the National Weather Service
Passengers on flights attempting to leave Chicago’s O’Hare airport last night were stranded amid severe storms and a tornado warning
Courtney Mares, a journalist for the Catholic News Agency who was on the plane at the time, said: “Our plane is sitting on the tarmac at Chicago O’Hare right now with multiple tornado warnings on everyone’s phones.
The captain announced that air traffic control and ground control have been evacuated.
‘The plane is shaking because the wind is blowing it back and forth.’
At the airport, anxious travelers sat shoulder to shoulder in the terminal buildings, while almost no one could move inside.
One man, Huntraiel Watson, told his Instagram followers, “I’m never going back to Houston.”
A photo taken by a Chicago DJ showed scores of people standing in a long hallway.
The storm was so bad that a stay-at-home order was issued, with passengers in the terminal building being forced to stay away from windows
The living facilities inside were also under pressure. For example, a video was posted on Instagram showing a long line for the toilets, which function as a winding path for both the men’s and women’s toilets.
Fortunately, at 1 a.m. today, tornado warnings were lifted, affecting 13 million people in three states: Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Flash flood warnings remained in effect in parts of Illinois until about 4 a.m. after storms dumped between two and three inches of rain in a matter of hours.
The U.S. has been plagued by extreme weather for weeks. Earlier this month, U.S. cities broke all-time heat records as the country battled scorching temperatures. 10 percent of the U.S. was declared a weather emergency.
Dozens of locations in the western and Pacific Northwest, including Nevada, Palm Springs and Medford, tied or broke previous heat records with temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
An extreme heat warning was issued by the National Weather Service, which covers approximately 36 million people, or 10 percent of the population.