- Passengers at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport were stuck on grounded planes last night
- Heavy rains and a tornado forced the international airport to be paralyzed
- The United States has been hit by bad weather for weeks
Passengers on flights attempting to leave Chicago’s O’Hare Airport last night were stranded amid severe storms and a tornado warning.
Videos posted on social media showed planes being shaken by the tornado. Lightning could be seen arcing across the night sky as heavy rain fell.
The National Weather Service last night detected up to ten simultaneous tornadoes in the metropolitan area of the Windy City, one of them heading towards the international airport.
The storm was so strong that a shelter-in-place order was issued in the area, with passengers in the terminal building asked to stay away from windows, while others were told to head underground.
But passengers already on departing flights could do little more than watch and wait in terror. According to FlightAware, more than 60 flights were cancelled and more than 400 were delayed at O’Hare alone.
Passengers were trapped on planes on the runway at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport last night
The National Weather Service last night detected up to ten simultaneous tornadoes in the metropolitan area of the Windy City.
Passengers on flights attempting to leave Chicago’s O’Hare Airport last night were stranded amid severe storms and a tornado warning.
Catholic News Agency reporter Courtney Mares, who was on a plane at the time, said: ‘Our plane is parked on the tarmac at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport right now as everyone’s phones are receiving multiple tornado warnings.
‘The captain announced that air traffic control and ground control have been evacuated.
‘The plane shakes as the wind pushes it from side to side.’
Inside the airport, anxious passengers were packed into the terminal buildings, shoulder to shoulder, with almost everyone inside unable to move.
One man, Huntraiel Watson, told his Instagram followers: “I will never return to Houston.”
A photograph, taken by a Chicago DJ, showed countless people standing in a long hallway.
The storm was so strong that a shelter-in-place order was issued in the area, and passengers in the terminal building were forced to move away from windows.
Housing facilities were also under strain inside; a video posted on Instagram showed a long queue for the toilets snaking from both the men’s and women’s bathrooms.
Fortunately, at 1 a.m. today, tornado warnings affecting 13 million people in three states: Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin were revoked.
Flash flood warnings remained in effect until around 4 a.m. in parts of Illinois after storms brought between two and five inches of rain in a matter of hours.
The United States has been hit by extreme weather conditions for weeks. Earlier this month, American cities broke all-time heat records, with scorching temperatures hitting the country, and 10 percent of the country was placed under severe weather warnings.
Dozens of locations in the West and Pacific Northwest, including Nevada, Palm Springs and Medford, tied or broke previous heat records with temperatures well above 100 degrees.
An excessive heat warning, the National Weather Service’s highest alert, was in effect for about 36 million people, or about 10 percent of the population.
