Ice turns to thunderstorm as temperatures rise

A Sunday afternoon of sleet and freezing rain turned to a January thunderstorm as temperatures around the Chicago area continued to warm up Sunday night and Monday morning.

Temperatures were expected to rise to the lower 40s by this morning after an evening of freezing temperatures and precipitation caused accidents, airport delays and power outages around the suburbs.

Freezing rain started falling around the Chicago suburbs midafternoon on Sunday, leading to a number of crashes, but Illinois State Police said Monday morning there had been no serious injuries from any of the more than a dozen accidents they had responded to Sunday night.

The storm knocked out power for some in the suburbs for a few hours as well. Around 5 p.m. 2,000 customers in Cook County and 1,000 customers in DuPage County were affected by outages, according to ComEd’s website, but by 8 p.m., almost all power had been restored.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the average flight delay at O’Hare Sunday afternoon and evening was almost 90 minutes, with some flights being delayed up to three hours and more than 200 flights canceled altogether. By Monday morning, delays of less than 15 minutes were reported.

By late Sunday, temperatures had warmed enough to turn the ice storm into a strange winter rainstorm with lightning and thunder observed around the area.

The winter warm up will continue into the first half of the week with temperatures in the mid 40s on Monday and possibly reaching 60 degrees on Tuesday, before dropping back into the teens the later half of the week, according to the National Weather Service.