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Severe thunderstorms cause ground stops at Chicago’s Midway and O’Hare airports

By Scott Bachmeier •

1-minute GOES-19 Red Visible (0.64 µm) images with an overlay of 1-minute GOES-19 GLM Flash Points and 30-minute Peak Wind Gusts, from 1800-2200 UTC on 24 July [click to play MP4 animation]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) showed the rapid development of thunderstorms that produced strong wind gusts across parts of northeast Illinois and northwest Indiana on 24 July 2025 — forcing ground stops for all scheduled inbound flights to Chicago’s Midway and O’Hare airports (beginning at 1945 UTC). The peak wind gust at Midway airport (KMDW) was 56 kts or 64 mph at 2002 UTC. In addition, GLM Flash Points indicated that abundant lightning activity was associated with these thunderstorms.

The corresponding GOES-19 Infrared imagery (below) displayed cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures as cold as -75ºC with some of the more robust thunderstorm overshooting tops.

1-minute GOES-19 Clean Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images with an overlay of 1-minute GOES-19 GLM Flash Points and 30-minute Peak Wind Gusts, from 1800-2200 UTC on 24 July [click to play MP4 animation]

According to a plot of rawinsonde data from Lincoln, Illinois (below) the coldest GOES-19 cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of -75ºC represented a ~1 km overshoot of the Most Unstable (MU) air parcel’s Equilibrium Level (EL).

Plot of rawinsonde data from Lincoln, Illinois at 0000 UTC on 25 July [click to enlarge]

1-minute GOES-19 Visible and Infrared images (below) included plots of SPC Storm Reports — which showed a wind gust to 80 mph (W80) at 1946 UTC (caused by a thunderstorm microburst) in northeast Illinois, and a wind gust to 63 mph (W63) at 2034 UTC in far northwest Indiana.

1-minute GOES-19 Visible (0.64 µm, left) and Infrared (10.3 µm, right) images, with time-matched (+/- 3 minutes) SPC Storm Reports (W=wind damage; W80=wind gust to 80 mph) plotted in red/cyan [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Categories: Aviation, GLM, GOES-19, Lightning, Severe convection