High winds cause damage across Chicagoland

ELK GROVE, Ill. — Strong winds caused damage, outages and flight delays and cancellations across Northern Illinois Saturday.

In Elk Grove, strong winds pulled the roof off of Willow Crossing Apartments, leading to dozens of people being evacuated from the building.

Elsewhere across Chicagoland, power poles came down and trees were uprooted onto cars because of the strong winds.

A restaurant near Diversey and Central even had their outdoor eating enclosure blown into the street.

As of 5:36 p.m., there were nearly 1,600 active outages in the Chicagoland area, according to ComEd’s outage tracker map online.

According to O’Hare International Airport, more than 450 flights were cancelled today due to high winds.

The National Weather Service said wind gust reports ranged between 60 to 77 miles-per-hour on Saturday and a high wind advisory will remain in place until 7 p.m.