Yesterday evening, I needed to wear earmuffs and gloves when walking Parker because of the 7°C weather. Yes, it's the middle of May, but we've had a really screwy spring this year.
Today I don't need gloves. Our official temperature bloomed from 8°C to 26°C in the past six hours. Even close to the lake, where I live, it's already warmer outside than inside—and I had the heat on briefly this morning!
Today the forecast looks hot and humid, before temperatures plunge again Sunday night. Then hot again next weekend. And maybe seasonally appropriate when meteorological summer begins two weeks from today.
Who knows. Welcome to Chicago in spring.
This month, Chicago has gotten some truly awful weather, more than most Aprils I remember. We saw only the second April in history to get two—count 'em—two snowstorms, the other time in 1938. This caps the snowiest season in 5 years and the 6th snowiest April ever.
Even though we had gorgeous, seasonably-cool weather yesterday, today through Thursday we will get so much rain not even the president could hyperbolize it enough.
We just want spring. The four days in April we got decent spring weather somehow don't seem sufficient.
I moved into my current place back in October. For the first time since then, just now, I opened one of the windows in my office. (I'll have to close it again pretty soon because of the squall line coming this way.)
That's because, for the first time since October 31st—when I wasn't home during the day to open it—it's 16°C at O'Hare.
It's about time.
It's March, meaning it's meteorologically spring, but this morning it doesn't feel that way. The overnight low at O'Hare bottomed out at -19.4°C, with a forecast high today around -9°C. We may even hit a record for the coldest March 4th in recorded history. Real spring-like weather won't come until Saturday, at the earliest, when it'll stay above freezing all day while it rains on us.
At least we have a pleasant side-effect to this Arctic high-pressure system squatting over Chicago right now:
This past weekend's performances went better than I expected, even with last night's temperature hovering around 32°C on the Pritzker stage.
Our entire Memorial Day weekend has been hot. Yesterday's official temperature at O'Hare (36°C) hit an all-time record for May 27th and was the warmest day in Chicago since 23 July 2012, almost 6 years ago.
So let me tell you how great it felt to be outside, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and black jeans, singing, for an hour.
The forecast calls for record heat today (35°C) and then some modest cooling by Wednesday.
For the record, that means spring lasted about 24 hours last week.
So far, this April ranks as the 2nd coldest in Chicago history. We had snow this past weekend, and we expect to have snow tonight—on April 18th.
So it may come as a surprise to people who confuse "weather" and "climate" that, worldwide, things are pretty hot:
The warm air to our north and east has blocked the cold air now parked over the midwestern U.S. Europe, meanwhile, feels like August. And Antarctica feels like...well, Antarctica, but unusually warm.
Note that the temperature anomalies at the bottom of the image above are based on the 1980-2010 climate normal period, which was warmer than any previous 30-year period. In other words, the poles may be 3-5°C warmer than normal now and also 4-7°C warmer than any point in recorded history.
At least, historically, a cold spring means a cool summer here. Lake Michigan is a very cold 5°C today, a few degrees below normal for this time of year, and a huge sink for summer heat later on. Here's hoping, anyway.
We had an absolutely beautiful day in Chicago yesterday. I ate lunch outside after going for a walk to obtain it. Birds sang. Trees started budding. The sun shone.
And then, suddenly, the sun didn't shine anymore:
Chicago lies in the transition zone between cold air to the north and mild, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and where the boundary passes a point in its gradual southward push, the temperature drop is remarkable. On Thursday afternoon the boundary, actually a sharp cold front, pushed across downtown Chicago, and the temperature plunged from 22°C at 2:43 pm to 10°C at 2:53 pm — a 12°C drop in 10 minutes.
Yeah, that's my city. Today the weather will be gray and cool, then wet and cold tomorrow, and then Sunday we could have snow. In bloody April.
The irony? The cold weather in Chicago is actually a predicted effect of global warming. Warm polar air and a warm air mass off the east coast of North America have trapped a cold air mass over the prairie provinces and northern Quebec. The world as a whole is warmer than normal today. If you're in Europe, for example, you're having a really nice evening.
It's the 99th day of 2018, and I'm looking out my office window at 25 mm of snow on the ground. It was -7°C on Saturday and -6°C last night. This isn't April; it's February. Come on, Chicago.
The Cubs' home opener originally scheduled for today will be played tomorrow. This is the second time in my memory that the home opener got snowed out. I didn't have tickets to today's game, but I did have tickets to the game on 15 April 1994, which also got snowed out.
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(Cubs official photo.)
Because it's Chicago. (Actually, there's a blocking mass of warm air to the east of us causing a bulge in the polar jet stream and pushing cool Canadian air down into the U.S. That sort of thing feels really nice in July; not so much in April.)
Which explains why it's just above freezing and pissing with rain.
Yesterday the temperature dropped from 15°C to 5°C in about 90 minutes as a cold front swept in from the north. Today we're living with the result.
Oddly, though, the current temperature (3°C) isn't that far from the normal March 1st temperature (4°C). So perhaps we shouldn't complain. But that taste of spring we got earlier this week made us all anxious for the real thing.
It's Chicago. The weather will change in a day or two.