Power outages after ice storm dropping but could linger into Saturday, ComEd says

At its peak, Wednesday's ice storm left nearly 100,000 ComEd customers throughout the Chicago area without power, causing several suburban schools to cancel classes Thursday.

By 8:30 p.m., the power company was reporting about 20,000 customers in Cook, Lake, McHenry, Kane, DuPage and Will counties still without power, with Kane and McHenry having the brunt of them. The Northern suburbs bore the brunt of Wednesday's storm.

In a statement on the company's outage map site, ComEd officials said "we expect 80% of outages in your region to be restored by Thursday evening and the majority of our remaining outages restored by Saturday evening."

Across northern Illinois, more than 211,000 had been without power at one point, ComEd said.

Elgin Area School District U-46 officials reported the outages caused them to cancel classes today at 10 schools.

South Elgin High School, Canton Middle School, Kenyon Middle School and Illinois Park Early Learning Center were all closed Thursday. Seven elementary schools in the district - Clinton, Huff, Lords Park, Ridge Circle, Sunnydale and Willard - also canceled classes.

All schools in Kane County's Central Unit District 301 also canceled classes, according to the district's website.

Kane County transportation officials reported numerous road closures in the morning due to downed power lines and toppled trees. Multiple municipalities reported traffic signal issues at a variety of intersections.

Temperatures on Thursday varied throughout the suburbs, with cooler temperatures to the north but highs reaching the lower 50s in some Southern suburbs.

Friday, expect a slight cool-down with a chance of light snow in the evening.

The weekend will see a return of warmer air, with temperatures into the mid-40s on Saturday and then the 50s on Sunday.

Rain is forecast to return to the area Sunday night into Monday, according to forecasts from the National Weather Service office in Romeoville.