{"id":711165,"date":"2026-06-18T09:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T09:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/711165\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T09:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T09:04:09","slug":"severe-weather-knocks-out-power-in-central-illinois-local-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/711165\/","title":{"rendered":"Severe weather knocks out power in central Illinois | Local News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) &#8211; Over 35,000 customers across Illinois are without power after destructive storms Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>As of 2 a.m. Thursday, <a href=\"http:\/\/PowerOutage.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">PowerOutage.com<\/a> reported the following counties with estimated and approximate outages:<\/p>\n<p>Macon County &#8211; 11,200Moultrie County &#8211; 1,400Sangamon County &#8211; 1,600Coles County &#8211; 9,900Christian County &#8211; 2,100Effingham County &#8211; 1,400<\/p>\n<p>With the outages came damage to several communities across central Illinois.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Charleston<\/p>\n<p>Downed tree limbs adorned one street in a Charleston neighborhood after strong storms moved through the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The City of Charleston <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wandtv.com\/news\/illinois\/charleston-declares-state-of-emergency-after-severe-weather-damage\/article_0c8d340b-19bc-4a04-b7bb-27fd1fcb552a.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">declared a state of emergency<\/a> late Wednesday evening due to severe storm damage throughout much of the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Petersburg<\/p>\n<p>Hand of Fate Brewing Company in Petersburg <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share\/p\/1BfXfjne51\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">posted on Facebook<\/a> that it closed on Wednesday due to severe storm damage to its building.<\/p>\n<p>A WAND reporter and photographer at the scene captured part of Hands of Fate&#8217;s shattered sign blocking off the sidewalk in front of the business.<\/p>\n<p>The Ameren facility in Petersburg also had its roof ripped off.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Effingham<\/p>\n<p>Portions of Effingham County suffered significant damage <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wandtv.com\/news\/illinois\/several-injuries-reported-none-life-threatening-after-tornado-rips-through-effingham\/article_f089ad05-1384-4b78-9da2-9d225ede7c15.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">after a tornado ripped through the area<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to the Effingham Fire Department, a tornado moved through the area just after 8 p.m. Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>EFD reported only minor injuries within the area its firefighters responded to. Additionally, no life-threatening injuries were reported.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Mound<\/p>\n<p>Meridian Elementary School in Blue Mound suffered heavy damage, with parts of its roof hanging off the side of the building.<\/p>\n<p>Pieces of the roof, including parts of a tarp, littered the school grounds and the surrounding areas.<\/p>\n<p>Decatur<\/p>\n<p>Decatur experienced flooding in parts of the city after heavy rains drenched the community.<\/p>\n<p>Eldorado and Van Dyke Streets suffered the brunt of the flooding in underpasses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Police had to block off some of the underpasses to keep residents from driving their vehicles into pools of standing water.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Illiopolis<\/p>\n<p>Downed tree limbs were scattered through the community of Illiopolis, located between Springfield and Decatur.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One resident described &#8220;spikey&#8221; hail that fell from the sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026. WAND TV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) &#8211; Over 35,000 customers across Illinois are without power after destructive storms Wednesday. As of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,52619,1075,11315,5629,983,70261,3,3774,126968,21,19,22,20,25,24,120173,120175,306709,120174,2986],"class_list":["post-711165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-central-illinois","tag-community","tag-forecast","tag-illinois","tag-local-news","tag-local-weather","tag-news","tag-power-outages","tag-tornado-warnings","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-wand","tag-wand-news","tag-wand-weather","tag-wandtv","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}