Monday's severe storms left 3,698 Lake Forest customers without power and knocked out traffic signals along Route 60 and Route 43, the two corridors that funnel shoppers and commuters to Market Square, downtown Lake Forest, and the city's major corporate campuses.

As of Tuesday evening, July 28, the signals remained dark, the Lake Forest Police Department said on X. Waukegan Road was reduced to one lane in each direction at Cedar Avenue after power lines came down across the roadway, according to a separate police alert. The city had not issued an update on signal restoration as of Wednesday morning. Emergency crews had responded Monday to live wires on Route 43 north of Conway Road, where some drivers were reportedly driving over the downed lines before responders could shut down the road, the Lake and McHenry County Scanner reported.

The outages hit during peak summer business hours. Two rounds of storms swept Lake County on Monday, July 27: the first arrived just before 11 a.m., the second at approximately 3:35 p.m., with wind gusts exceeding 80 mph. The Lake Forest Recreation Center was forced to close.

Lake Forest ranked among the hardest-hit communities in the Chicago area, according to Patch, which reported more than 214,000 ComEd customers regionwide remained without power as of 8 a.m. Tuesday. Lake County alone had more than 32,000 homes and businesses still dark near noon Tuesday, roughly 11 percent of the county's customer base.

ComEd projected 80 percent of outages restored by noon Wednesday, July 29, and the vast majority of remaining customers back online by 10 p.m. Friday, July 31. The utility's outage tracker had not confirmed whether that target was met as of publication. ComEd deployed more than 2,300 personnel across northern Illinois on Tuesday.

"When heavy storms like this hit, ComEd always prioritizes restoration for critical infrastructure like hospitals, nursing homes and schools, followed by dispatching crews to the hardest hit areas to make repairs that will bring the most amount of customers back online," a ComEd spokesperson told the Lake and McHenry County Scanner.

As we reported Tuesday, the storms also knocked out power to roughly 1,900 Lake Bluff homes and forced the Lake Bluff Public Library to close.

For Lake Forest businesses along Route 60, Route 43, and Waukegan Road, the disruption compounds lost foot traffic with access problems: darkened signals force drivers to treat intersections as four-way stops, slowing the flow of customers into Market Square and the downtown shopping district. ComEd said its service area has already experienced more storms in 2026 than in all of 2025.

Customers can track restoration progress at ComEd.com/OutageTracker.