A dangerous round of severe weather took aim at the Chicago area on Thursday, with storms capable of producing 70+ mph wind gusts, pea-size hail or larger, and torrential rainfall.

Afternoon thunderstorms moving through the area gave a brief reprieve from the extreme heat that had plagued the city since last week but triggered more than a thousand power outages affecting nearly 50,000 customers. As of 5:09 p.m., Comed had 1,055 reported outages, affecting 51,210 customers.in Cook County.

As residents of Chicago's Northwest Side recovered from the sweltering heat, a round of storms Thursday caused a ground stop at O'Hare and Midway airports.

A line of severe thunderstorms raced through the Chicago area Wednesday afternoon, downing trees, causing power outages, and forcing ground stops at O'Hare and Midway airports.

Extreme heat is blanketing the Chicago area with heat index readings expected to be up to 110. There was also a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for parts of the area Thursday.

Torrential rains nearing 5 inches in just a few hours led to flash flooding across parts of Chicago on Friday afternoon, snarling both traffic on the ground and in the air.

An explosion leveled a gas station in Berwyn Thursday afternoon after two main gas lines ignited while crews responded to storm-related power outages, officials said.

A transformer failure on Chicago's Northwest Side caused several thousand residents to lose power overnight as temperatures struggled to dip below 80 degrees.

ComEd reported more than 7,000 customers in DuPage County were without power as of around 4 p.m. Around 1,000 more were impacted across Chicago.