As of Thursday morning, crews had reduced the number of people without power to 8,000 from a peak of almost 560,000 on Monday night. ComEd spokesman Joe Trost said he's confident customers still without power will be back up by 6 p.m. tonight. The majority of those customers are in Chicago and various southern suburbs.......

Photo by efroten Chicago Weather Godfather Tom Skilling confirmed that Monday evening's intense storms spawned three tornadoes that produced damage across the Chicago metro area. According to Skilling, Griffith, Indiana was hit by an Enhanced Fujita scale-2 tornado (winds 111-135 m.p.h.) while both Bloomingdale and Bolingbrook were hit by EF1 tornadoes. In addition to the twisters, nearly 2.5 inches of rain fell at O'Hare, already making this the wettest meteorological summer in fifteen years.......

Photo by mmayes Bad news for those ComEd customers left without power after last night's storms: restoring power may take several days. According to ComEd executive vice president Anne Pramaggiore, "Given the magnitude of the damage ... we do expect this to be a multiday restoration effort." Ouch. According to ComEd, as of 11 a.m., over 220,000 customers were still without power, roughly half of those in Chicago. Almost half a million customers experienced......

Thousands of Chicagoland ComEd customers are still without power after severe weather rolled through the area on Sunday, the fifth storm in the last 10 days to wreck havoc on ComEd’s systems. We are sincerely grateful that area residents without electricity do not also have to contend with severely cold or hot weather, like the fatal heat wave that recently swept the East Coast. Regardless, it’s good to be prepared ahead of time in the......

According to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, the answer is yes. On Monday her office accused ComEd -- and its parent company Excelon -- of lobbying aggressively to kill a bill before the state legislature that would have required utilities to purchase as much as five percent of their electricity from clean-coal plants. The bill, which House Speaker Mike Madigan strongly supported, failed in the House Saturday. In a statement to the press, Benjamin Weinberg,......

The City is running low on de-snowing dollars. We've already plowed through over $14 million of an $18 million budget. [S-T] Can someone please manufacture and buy us this striped Barracuda from what appears to be the magnificent past? Thank you. A Joliet man robbed the same Chase bank twice. He's been apprehended. [Trib] Com Ed busts ass to keep Hugo's Frog Bar, Tavern on Rush, Lux Bar and Gibsons open yesterday. [S-T] Traffic is......

Behold, Outside the Loop Radio's year in review special, featuring yours truly, Steve Rhodes of The Beachwood Reporter and Dave Schalliol of Gapers Block. The Bulls' interim head coach Jim Boylan is making changes for tonight's game. Ben Gordon will be riding the bench and Chris Duhon will be starting in his place. [Sun-Times] No, the City is not going to dispatch smoking police come 12:01am New Years Day. But put out the cigarette,......