More than 300 flights canceled Tuesday after first blast of winter

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CHICAGO (STMW) - Over 300 flights were canceled at O’Hare and Midway airports Tuesday and thousands of ComEd customers remained without power after a wintry mix of sleet, freezing rain, snow and high winds pummeled the Chicago area Monday.

For the second day in a row, O’Hare was the nation’s epicenter for flight cancellations.

As of 3:50 p.m., more than 290 flights had been canceled at O’Hare and delays were reported of 30 minutes or more, the city’s Department of Aviation said. At Midway, more than 24 flights were canceled and some delays were averaging 15 minutes or more.

But that was a big improvement over Monday, when a wicked combination of rain, ice and snow led to the cancellation of more than 1,400 flights. On Monday, nearly 1,360 flights were canceled at O’Hare and more than 300 were canceled at Midway.

O’Hare’s number of arriving cancellations towered over that of No. 2 Newark Liberty International Airport, which saw 85 arrivals cancelled. Boston’s Logan International Airport was second highest in departure cancellations at 66.

About 1.9 inches of snow was recorded at O’Hare by the time the snowfall tapered off Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service. At 2:45 p.m. Monday, wind speeds reached up to 42 mph at the airport.

The storm disrupted ComEd service to nearly 88,000 customers. As of about 9 a.m. Tuesday, about 11,000 were still without electricity across the area, according to the utility. More than 550 crews were out working to restore power.

The largest concentration of outages occurred in the southern and western regions, including Lee, LaSalle, and Livingston counties. The utility issued a statement early Tuesday saying the majority of the affected customers should expect their service restored by Tuesday evening.