As a cold front moved into the Chicago area wind gusts as strong as 74 mph were recorded overnight, pushing a semi off an overpass to the road below, downing trees and power lines and leaving some 100,000 ComEd customers without power at the height of the system, meteorologists and utility officials said Thursday morning.

       As of about 8 a.m. Thursday there were more than 750 active power outages with approximately 12,000 customers still without power, according to the Commonwealth Edison outage map for the Chicago area. The utility said that number was down from the height of the storm, the effects of which were expected to continue until at least 9 a.m. Thursday.

       “We expect impacts to the system as the storm progresses. We have restored 80% of 102,000 impacted customers and all remaining customers will be restored no later than 11 p.m. (Thursday),” according to a banner on ComEd’s website.

       The wind also knocked a tractor-trailer off Interstate 94 south, sending it careening over a barrier and down to Wentworth Avenue below, leaving two people suffering injuries that were not considered life-threatening, officials said.

       The semi-truck had been traveling on southbound I-94 at 1:06 a.m. Thursday, according to Illinois State Police. Authorities said the semi was traveling near 27th street in the left lane of I-94 “when high winds caused the unit to veer to the left and strike the concrete median barrier,” according to a statement from state police. “The vehicle rolled over the barrier, overturned and landed on Wentworth Avenue below I-94.”

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       Forecasters at the National Weather Service had warned wind gusts could be in excess of 60 mph when record-breaking warmth during the day gave way to a powerful cold front blasting in from the West, across the plains and mountains, such as earlier Wednesday when the Weather Channel said a wind gust of 107 mph was recorded in Lamar, Colorado. Although the system weakened slightly as it moved into the Midwest, gusts of 54 mph to 74 mph were recorded across northern Illinois, according to the National Weather Service.

       The strongest gust was recorded at the lake, at 74 mph. Other wind speeds were: 69 mph in Sugar Grove, 68 mph in Waukegan, 66 mph at O’Hare International Airport (the city’s official weather recording site), 62 mph in Rockford, 58 mph in Crystal Lake, 57 mph in Joliet and 55 mph in Peru.

       Referring to devastating tornadoes that left six people dead at a southern Illinois Amazon facility and at least 74 people dead as the same system leveled parts of Kentucky, meteorologists were examining more than 2,000 storm reports from across the country in the aftermath of the unusually strong winds and widespread damage.

       “The second major weather system to impact the central U.S. in the past week produced widespread damaging winds on Wednesday. Some of this was due to organized thunderstorms while much of it was not,” the weather service said on Twitter. The agency linked to an interactive map of storm reports made following the event overnight.

       Locally, the majority of reports are from weather spotters recording the strongest wind gust in their community, but it also included some damage reports. In Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, multiple trees fell on top of vehicles parked on the road and there was a similar report in Streamwood, where a large tree fell on top of a vehicle parked outside someone’s home.

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       In Schaumburg, parts of Higgins Road were closed around 3 a.m. because of downed power lines. There was also a report of downed power lines in Downers Grove, blocking the road, and in the western suburb of Wayne there was a report of multiple downed power poles and power lines. A representative of Commonwealth Edison did not immediately respond to a request for information about power outages.

       There also was a report in Johnsburg of a “medium-sized pine tree” that was felled, and in Wadsworth, a tree, approximately 16 inches in diameter, was downed, according to the damage reports compiled by the weather service.

       Meteorologists from the weather service also warned of the smell of smoke in the Chicago area early Thursday. Forecasters said on social media there were no fires in the immediate area, but the wind had carried smoke all the way from Kansas, 600 miles away, on the “strong southwest winds.”

       Check back for updates.

       Chicago Tribune reporter Jade Yan contributed.

       kdouglas@chicagotribune.com

       Twitter @312BreakingNews

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