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Typical May game at Wrigley, 2011
This weekend marks the unofficial start of summer — pools open, theme parks brace for the annual onslaught of visitors, the annual flowers you have planted really start to fill out, etc. That’s nice and all, but it would have been nice to experience spring in Chicago before 90-degree temperatures arrive, which is supposed to happen tomorrow.
Though I moved here last summer from Southern California, I am no stranger to “real” weather — having been born in New York City and raised in Dayton, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pa. I even know my steamy heat as a former resident of Virginia who spent a few hot and humid days in Deltaville along the bottom of the Northern Neck. (Playing a double-header in 90-plus temps and humidity in Deltaville’s still-used, 20s-era minor league baseball park — complete with corrugated aluminum walls and chicken wire protecting the grandstands —is not an experience I will ever forget. As I cracked to a teammate: “Now I know what a burrito in a microwave feels like.”)
I don’t mind the heat. What I can’t abide is a “spring” like the one we experienced this year in Chicago. Whet Moser, a blogger for Chicago Magazine, did some research and revealed the obvious: This was the worst spring, by far, in the last five years — and probably longer than that.
Moser looked at April in various weather categories: temperature (worst, sorta), wind (worst, barely), precipitation (Not the worst, barely), sunshine (worst: one clear day in the month), barometric pressure (worst), and “general crappiness (worst).
Conclusion: April 2011 is clearly the worst April in five years. If you were thinking [in the first weekend in May] that this has been the worst spring you can remember, I think you can fairly say that, up until that point, you are right. If you were thinking it’s the worst more because of conditions instead of temperature, you’re both right and particularly observant.
So there we have it: 2011 is officially the worst spring you can remember.
Having stumbled across this ChicagoMag post this afternoon, I thought I’d look at WeatherUnderground’s temperature data for May 2011 in Chicago since 2007. Bottom line: This is the coldest May in Chicago in the last five years. Only 2008 approaches this level of “Where’s Spring?” misery. But it’s really not even that close. As you will see below, 2008 had twice the number of days in which the high temperature got in the “at or above normal” range.
The average high in May 2011 has been 66 degrees. That’s the lowest high since at least 2007. We’ve had just 12 days where the daily high reached normal or above. We’ve had 7 days where the high for the day barely beat the normal low for that day — and we had two days in which it met or didn’t reach it at all.
Here’s the breakdown (and my try-out to be an intern at The Weather Channel):
May 2011 temperatures:
Average high temp: 66 with 11 days at or above normal; 7 days where the high for the day barely beat the normal low for the day (and 2 in which it barely or didn’t reach it).
Lowest high for a day: 46.
May 2010 temperatures:
Average high temp: 71 with 22 days at or above normal; 3 days where the high for the day barely beat the normal low for the day (and 0 in which it barely or didn’t reach it).
Lowest high for a day: 50
May 2009 temperatures:
Average high temp 71 with 27 days at or above normal; 0 days where the high for the day barely beat the normal low for the day (and 0 in which it barely or didn’t reach it).
Lowest high for a day: 60
May 2008 temperatures:
Average high temp 66 with 22 days at or above normal; 2 days where the high for the day barely beat the normal low for the day (and 1 in which it barely or didn’t reach it).
Lowest high for a day: 50
May 2007 temperatures:
Average high temp 76 with 30 days at or above normal; 1 day where the high for the day barely beat the normal low for the day (and 1 in which it barely or didn’t reach it).
Lowest high for a day: 59
So there you have it. I’m not crazy or “soft” for bitching about Spring in Chicago this year. It’s been crappy. Really crappy. The data proves it.
