July-August 2009

by Ed Darack

A spring morning in Chicago dawns cloudless and breezeless. By mid-afternoon, the sky is dark, heavy, and threatening. By nightfall, the urban skyline flashes blue and violet under the press of a powerful thunderstorm. The next day arrives white, with a shallow blanket of snow on the ground, and by the afternoon of the day after that, the weather calls for shorts and T-shirts, and the snow is just a memory.

Chicago’s weather, while popularly called “windy,” is really best described as robust, variegated, and sometimes confusing, with short spans of time capable of bringing a wide range of weather. The wild fluctuations in weather described above were actually witnessed just a few weeks prior to the writing of this article.

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