CHICAGO (AP) -- A bus toppled from a bridge in central Illinois on Friday during blustery wind storms that tore across the Midwest with gusts topping 60 mph. The bus driver and a passenger were hospitalized.
Elsewhere, the wind pushed over trucks, peeled off rooftops and knocked out power to thousands in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.
``It has been a day of truly going head-to-head against Mother Nature,'' Illinois' ComEd utility spokesman Trent Frager said.
The National Weather Service reported winds gusting to 58 mph near the Peoria airport and in Galesburg, meteorologist Kirk Huettl said. He added the wind overturned two trucks on a highway between Bloomington and Champaign.
In central Illinois, a Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District bus toppled over a bridge railing and fell about 15 feet in what Champaign Deputy Fire Chief Tim Wild said probably was a wind-related accident.
The bus landed mostly on a grassy embankment, but part of a door was submerged in water.
The driver and one of the passengers were taken to hospitals; authorities did not identify them or provide detail on their conditions. Four other passengers climbed out on their own and appeared to suffer minor injuries.
``I think the wind caught it,'' passenger Amy Flanigan, 19, told The (Champaign) News-Gazette. ``I saw it happening and held on.''
In Chicago, wind gusting to more than 60 mph followed heavy rains Thursday night, sending debris flying off downtown high-rises and forcing the closure of several streets, police said.
ComEd's Frager said at the height of the wind storm, about 47,000 customers in northern Illinois were without power. All but 2,600 customers were restored by 8 p.m. Friday.
In Michigan, the high winds knocked down a fabric dome covering a golf facility at Funtyme Adventure Parks in Okemos. Co-owner Paul Orlando said everyone was evacuated from the 100-by-70-yard dome and no one was injured.
``We did get people out promptly,'' Orlando said. ``That is what we were most concerned with.''
On the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit with Windsor, Ontario, two lanes were blocked for part of Friday afternoon when wind apparently blew a manufactured home off a truck.
As many as 35,000 of DTE Energy's 2.1 million customers were without power because of the wind, spokesman Scott Simons said. That number had fallen to 18,000 as of 9:30 p.m. EST, he said.
The weather service said wind gusts reached 58 mph at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
In Xenia, Ohio, outside Dayton, the wind peeled off part of a grocery store roof. None of the customers and workers inside Don's Super Valu were injured.
At the height of the storm, 100,000 customers throughout Ohio were without power, FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin said.
