Severe storms that rolled through the Midwestern United States this week knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of customers, and utilities are still scrambling to deploy response teams to fix downed utility poles and lines affected by fallen trees after winds of up to 99 miles per hour ripped through the region.
The storms began on Monday evening, knocking out power for tens of thousands of customers throughout the Midwest, with the majority in Ohio. By Tuesday, even stronger storms arrived, leaving hundreds of thousands of additional customers without power.
It was the largest outage event in company history for Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), which saw a peak of 301,000 of its 500,000 total customers without power on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, 274,000 NIPSCO customers were still without power, mostly in northwest Indiana.
As of Thursday, more than 239,000 NIPSCO customers are still in the dark, the largest number of any utility still experiencing outages. The utility stressed that restoration estimates are not yet available as damage assessments are still underway. Roughly 60% of NIPSCO customers were affected, with 313,000 of its 500,000 customers losing power at some point this week. There are so many outages that the utility’s automated outage alert system is unavailable, which it attributed to an “unprecedented volume of outage activity.” Additional storms on Wednesday have complicated these restoration efforts, NIPSCO said.
The storm’s impacts extend across nearly all of NIPSCO’s electric service territory, with “significant” damage to poles, power lines, substations and trees throughout northern Indiana. Due to the scale and geographic reach of the damage, restoration is expected to be a multi-day effort in some communities, the utility warned. Storm damage, extensive vegetation debris, flooding and power outages are creating hazardous conditions and traffic backups across the area, making it difficult for crews to assess and address damage quickly.
Duke Energy reported that more than 180,000 of its customers in Greater Cincinnati lost power on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, that number had dropped slightly to 160,000, with 134,000 customers in southwest Ohio and 26,000 customers in Northern Kentucky without power. Fallen trees, broken poles and damaged equipment slowed restoration efforts, Duke said.
By Wednesday, Duke Energy had restored power to over 171,000 customers, with 102,589 still in the dark. As of Thursday, 37,822 Duke customers in Ohio and 6,945 Duke customers in Kentucky were still without power, per poweroutage.us.
In Ohio, roughly 70,000 AEP customers were without power by Tuesday evening, with the majority located in the Columbus area. AEP Ohio told the Columbus Dispatch that around 20,000 crews were in the area actively addressing the outages, including out-of-state crews from Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Kentucky. As of Thursday, more than 27,000 AEP Ohio customers are still without power.
ComEd saw nearly 410,000 of its customers without power in Illinois. The largest impacts from Tuesday’s storms were concentrated in ComEd’s south region, where crews are dealing with downed trees, broken poles, and damaged power lines requiring extensive repairs. The August 9-11 storms mark the 19th major weather event affecting ComEd customers in 2026 — the highest number in more than two decades. Illinois has now recorded more tornadoes this year than any other state in the country.
By Wednesday, ComEd had restored power to more than 80% of impacted customers. Additional storms on Wednesday morning added more than 35,000 outages and disrupted restoration efforts, ComEd said. As of Thursday morning, ComEd has restored service to approximately 328,000 customers, with more than 61,000 still in the dark, per poweroutage.us.
Nearly 4,500 ComEd personnel, crews, and contractors remain engaged in restoration efforts, supported by operating base camps established at Daley College, Joliet Junior College, and Prairie State College. ComEd’s sister utilities on the East Coast are also providing mutual assistance, including more than 150 overhead lineworkers and control room operators supporting restoration efforts across northern Illinois.
