11,000 still without power in northern Illinois

A utility spokesman says nearly 250 ComEd crews managed to restore power to more than 128,000 customers within 24 hours after a violent weekend storm front raked northern Illinois.

ComEd spokesman Joe Trost said electricity had been restored to all but 11,000 Chicago-area customers by 5 a.m. Monday.

At the peak of the outages, nearly 140,000 customers were affected by the storms that blew across northern Illinois early Sunday.

The city of Chicago and its near-west suburbs were among the hardest hit by the lightning and 65 mile-per-hour winds.

National Weather Service meteorologist Casey Sullivan says the agency received reports of quarter-sized hail.

It was the fifth time storms had damaged ComEd's power grid in a ten-day period.