ComEd says nearly 200,000 people still don’t have power Wednesday morning due to the line of strong thunderstorms that blew through northern Illinois earlier this week.

And the utility says some customers may not get back on the grid until this weekend. The utility says it expects to have power restored to 70 percent of affected customers by Thursday afternoon, with 90 percent of outages fixed by Friday night.  But it adds that a small handful of customers could remain in the dark until Saturday night.

The utility reports that Monday morning’s weather, which packed 80-mph winds that downed trees and power lines, knocked out power to about 850,000 customers, making it the most damaging storm since 1998.

ComEd is using private contractors and workers from neighboring states to help with storm cleanup.