Hundreds of thousands without power days after Midwest storm

By RYAN J. FOLEY Associated Press
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of households in Iowa and Illinois are without power two days after a rare wind storm hit the Midwest. The storm known as a derecho devastated parts of the power grid, flattened valuable corn fields and left two people dead in Iowa and Indiana. Much of Iowa and parts of several other states suffered outages Monday as straight-line winds toppled trees, snapped poles and downed power lines. The storm had winds of up to 112 mph near Cedar Rapids, as powerful as an inland hurricane, as it tore from eastern Nebraska across Iowa and parts of Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois. The derecho produced seven tornadoes in the Chicago metropolitan area, including an EF-1 tornado with 110 mph winds.