Strong storms Tuesday night into Wednesday morning knocked out power in the Bartlett area and forced Bartlett High School to cut classes short Wednesday.
School District U46 officials announced at 10 a.m. Wednesday classes were canceled. Students were sent home after attending classes for just a short time.
Two neighboring schools, Wayne Elementary in Wayne and Hawk Hollow Elementary in Bartlett, remained open despite not having power Wednesday morning, officials said.
The Elgin area — which includes South Elgin, Bartlett and other towns — at one point had about 15,000 customers without power, a ComEd spokesperson said.
City of Elgin spokeswoman Molly Center said storms dumped heavy rain in the area, but there was little for the city to clean up.
Eric Babcock, West Dundee’s public works director, said the Tuesday night showers caused tree limb breakage in the heavily wooded Old Town area.
“We had a lot of that down that we had to pick up throughout the morning,” he said.
East Dundee Public Works Director Phil Cotter said there was a power outage in one of the village’s municipal buildings due to a tree falling on a transformer. The village did experience some flooding at the Wendt Street and Madison Court intersection, he said.
School District 300 officials said Dundee Highlands Elementary School was temporarily without power Wednesday morning due to a nearby transformer failure.
The Walmart store in Carpentersville was closed due to an outage earlier Wednesday but was able to reopen later, according to the store’s Facebook page.
According to the village of Carpentersville’s public safety department, about 790 ComEd customers were without power Tuesday and Wednesday. And the city of St. Charles reported a sustained outage affected as many as 600 people overnight, according to its Facebook page.
The Elgin area reported about 2.55 inches of rainfall over the last 24 hours, one of the largest totals in northern Illinois, said Charlie Mott, a National Weather Service meteorologist. The forecast for Wednesday and Thursday calls for drier conditions and cooler temperatures, before summer conditions and the possibility of rain returns for the Labor Day weekend.
Among other Kane County cities, St. Charles reported 1.59 inches of rainfall, North Aurora reported 1.8, Aurora reported 1.57, Batavia 1.65 inches, and Geneva reported 1.52 , according to the National Weather Service.
The Fox River is not approaching flood stages, according to the National Weather Service. The Fox River checkpoint near Algonquin reported the river stage at 6.54 feet on Wednesday morning, about 2.5 feet below the lowest flood stage.
Freelance reporter Erin Sauder contributed.
