Severe weather rolled into Chicago on Wednesday and Thursday, but the impact of last week’s storms were felt long into the weekend.And as tree limbs came down, calls to the 311 hotline went up.From Wednesday afternoon to Sunday night, Chicagoans filed more than 20,000 weather-related complaints wi th the city’s non-emergency hotline, according to a WBEZ analysis of city data. The complaints, called in from each of the city's 50 wards, painted a picture of how power outages, flooding and downed trees took over city services, block by block.At the start of the storm outbreak on Wednesday afternoon, the 311 hotline received as many as 37 complaints in a single minute.Since the hotline relaunched in December 2018, the highest single-day total of weather-related calls were made last Thursday, June 11, according to the WBEZ analysis. The date that took second place? Last Wednesday, June 10.Prior to that, the record for most weather-related calls was set on August 11, 2020, following a derecho that spanned much of the Midwest, according to the National Weather Service. It was also when an EF-1 tornado touched down in Rogers Park on the North Side.While no tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in Chicago last week, the city was hit with powerful straight-line winds, which can have similar impacts.The overwhelming majority of calls were about trees: over 90% of them, the analysis shows. Many calls, especially early on, were classified as “tree emergencies,” a distinction that the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communication (OEMC) sets for trees blocking roads or sidewalks, or for trees that have fallen on houses or cars.But in the heat of the moment, it can be hard for residents to tell what kind of complaint to file, said Cole Stallard, commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation. Many complaints that were filed as less-urgent “tree debris” clean-up requests were actually much more serious, Stallard said. “When you read the notes, it says, ‘Hey, this is blocking the street, sidewalk, on a house, on a car.’ So we’re turning those into an emergency.”The effort to clear trees has been “all hands on deck,” Stallard said. The primary focus is to clear blocked streets, then sidewalks, then parkways.During a press conference on Friday, Stallard said that there were approximately 450 roads blocked by downed trees. In an interview with WBEZ on Monday, Stallard said he expected every road to be unblocked by the end of the day. While the storms, overall, impacted all 50 of Chicago’s wards, the wards with many of the blocked streets and downed trees were on the Southwest and Far South sides, according to the WBEZ analysis. This included the 23rd and 18th wards, as well as the 21st, 8th and 9th wards.By far, the ward with the most 311 calls was the 13th Ward, with more than 1,100 weather-related complaints logged with OEMC between Wednesday and Sunday.Many streets in the 13th Ward had a complaint filed, and residents in the ward logged more than 400 calls to 311 about downed trees alone on Friday following Thursday’s severe storms.Wind gusts at Midway Airport, located within the 13th Ward, were as high as 73 miles per hour on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Those winds, said Ald. Marty Quinn (13th), brought trees down across the entire ward.“There was a healthy number of streets blocked on both days, and once it felt like once we cleared streets on Wednesday, there was a whole ‘nother group of streets that popped up,” said Quinn, who compared the back-to-back storms to the film Groundhog Day. “Friday morning, waking up again, and seeing a different section of the ward in a similar state with … our streets blocked off with trees. It was almost surreal.”Residents who filed complaints with 311 will receive a survey link to fill out an initial damage assessment, according to OEMC.Chicago can expect more severe storms on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Quinn is hopeful that some of the hardest-hit spots last week are spared from this week’s weather.“Whatever Mother Nature brings, we're going to do our very, very best to work through all the situations and be prepared,” he said. ...read more read less