Usually I hate July weather in Chicago. Not this year. We ended up with the coolest July in my lifetime (at Midway), and also one of the driest, making for an unusually pleasant month:
Chicago's 69.4-degree average July temperature at O'Hare International Airport was the coolest of the past 17 years. But at Midway Airport, the month's 71-degree average temperature was the site's coolest in 42 years. Estimates based on the month's temperatures suggest the need for air conditioning was 30 percent below the long-term average.
The month's lack of rainfall was impressive -- and a huge change from the wet spring that kept farmers out of their fields. Only 1.53 inches of rain was measured here in July, less than half the 3.51 inches considered normal.
One symptom of this: O'Hare recorded only one day in which the temperature hit 30°C, and Midway only two, while here at Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Headquarters the lake's proximity kept it even cooler than that.
But this doesn't mean it was ever cold, either. Just pleasant. I sure will miss it this week: the forecast calls for warmer, wetter weather until the middle of the month.