Zach RothPeoria Journal Star
Thousands of Ameren Illinois customers in the Peoria area remain without power Tuesday after severe storms struck Monday night.
According to Ameren, 4,872 customers in Peoria County were without power as of 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, representing around 5% of the company's 91,243 customers in the county. The outages in Peoria County are widespread, with many popping up around 9 p.m. Monday night. Others were reported by customers to them over the course of the morning and afternoon.
Large numbers of customers remain without power in places like West Peoria, where hundreds of people remain in the dark. In several cases, outages came due to power lines falling onto trees or wiring problems. Others had "undetermined" causes likely caused by the severe weather.
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In Tazewell County, Ameren says that 6,710 customers are without power, representing 10% of the company's customers, with Woodford County seeing 332 customers without power.
Out in Knox County, 2,852 customers remain without power – just under 11% of Ameren's customers in the area – with 1,025 customers in Fulton County still in the dark.
Brian Bretsch, a spokesperson for Ameren, said that the north region of their Illinois base – which includes Peoria and Tazewell counties – had 48,000 customers without power at the peak of the storm Monday night.
Ameren said in a statement that restoring power would be a multi-day effort, but they expected 80% of customers without power to have it restored by 10 p.m. Wednesday. The company noted that assessments were continuing about the extent of the damage. Through those assessments, the company said that they would have more a more accurate determination of when power would be restored for most people.
The city of Peoria warned that the city was experiencing issues with their non-emergency phone lines and their 911 center. Stacy Petersen, public information officer for the city, said that police and fire department non-emergency lines were down and that those on AT&T were not having their calls getting through to 911 as a result of widespread outages on their network.
Petersen said that those calls would be returned, as dispatchers had software to track calls and return them immediately.
The city's Public Works department also said that crews were out and about working on cleaning up fallen trees and limbs on city streets. Anyone seeking to report a fallen tree or limb is asked to contact Public Works at (309) 494-8800 or via email at publicworks@peoriagov.org. They can also contact Peoria Cares at (309) 494-2273 or message them on their app or their website.
In addition, Public Works said that several traffic lights throughout the area were flashing or completely out, with crews working to repair those signals.
Strong storms hit central Illinois
Matt Barnes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lincoln, said that an unstable atmosphere created by hot and humid conditions Monday allowed the storm system to grow as it moved from central Iowa into large portions of Illinois.
"It was a very hot day," Barnes said. "Temperatures were in the low-to-mid 90s (and) surface dew points were in the mid-70s, so it was very humid. That combination of hot and humid led to a very unstable environment across the area. That was really the fuel for the thunderstorm cluster that formed in Iowa, the extreme instability that formed throughout the region."
Winds in the Peoria area reached 60-80 mph, and Barnes said that they had observers out throughout the area to determine if winds got higher in some areas.
"We have a survey team out there today in portions of Tazewell and Woodford counties examining the damage to see if there was even a tornado or two embedded in the thunderstorms as they raced across the area," Barnes said.
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Interestingly, Barnes said that Peoria got off easy when it came to rain, with about half an inch falling in the area. But in Fulton County, rainfall got up to eight inches in some areas, enough to set off flood warnings throughout most of the county.
"That was ground zero for the rainfall," Barnes said. "Much of Peoria County didn't have much rain at all, but what we had on the back edge of this system (were) thunderstorm cells that continuously regenerated themselves over the same location. They were in a situation where they were getting several thunderstorms over and over again."
Severe weather has likely left the area, with Barnes saying that the most severe of Tuesday's weather has moved south of Peoria. With the heat and humidity out of the area, the rest of the week looks good weather-wise, with temperatures in the upper 70s to low 80s.
"The weather looks fantastic, a long stretch of below-normal temperatures around 80 degrees and low temperatures dipping into the upper 50s-low 60s from Wednesday through the upcoming weekend into next week," Barnes said.
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