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WNIJ's summary of news items around our state.

Tens of thousands still without power after Tuesday morning storms

Late Tuesday Afternoon Update:

Tens of thousands of people in northern Illinois were without electricity hours after a fast-moving thunderstorm downed trees and severed power lines.

The early morning storm knocked out power to about 300,000 homes and businesses in the northern part of the state.

Commonwealth Edison said that by mid-afternoon, 91,000 customers were still without electricity, most of them to the west of Chicago.

Company officials expect power will be restored to most of them by Thursday evening or Friday. 

The storms also rolled through Wisconsin. In Rock County, the city of Beloit was hit hard. Numerous trees and power lines are down. Utility crews are making progress on bringing 7,000 people who lost power back on line. 

WNIJ and WNIU were both knocked off the air by outages associated with the storms. Problems with a generator kept them off until 1:20 p.m., when both stations' signals were restored.

Earlier Story:The severe weather knocked out power to residents early this morning. Com-Ed reports that roughly 68-thousand customers are affected by the outages. They expect that number to rise this morning. WNIJ and WNIU are affected, and both stations remain off the air. In the meantime, please click on the "listen live" links at the top of the website to hear either broadcast stream.

So far, no injuries have been reported as a result of the severe weather.

At around 4:00 this morning, the National Weather Service was tracking a line of storms moving through southern Wisconsin. Those storms eventually pushed through northern Illinois as residents began waking up. Today's forecast says most storms should be ending up mid-to-late morning.

Guy Stephens produces news stories for the station, and coordinates our online events calendar, PSAs and Arts Calendar announcements. In each of these ways, Guy helps keep our listening community informed about what's going on, whether on a national or local level. Guy's degrees are in music, and he spent a number of years as a classical host on WNIU. In fact, after nearly 20 years with Northern Public Radio, the best description of his job may be "other duties as required."