An acrid veil of smoke, haze and fog lay across the Chicago area Wednesday evening in the wake of the holiday fireworks, and in the process it provided a text-book example of smog. That word was coined in 1905 by London physician Harold Des Veaux to describe natural London fog contaminated by smoke.
In the 102 years since then, smog has come to be a synonym for any kind of visible air pollution in urban areas and now, increasingly, in rural areas.
Chicago’s 4th of July smog lingered through the calm, humid overnight hours, not dissipating until winds picked up after sunrise Thursday morning.
Looking ahead, an offshoot of the western heat wave expands across the Midwest this weekend, sending Chicago’s temperatures to the middle 90s on Sunday.- That would be 2007’s hottest to date and highest since 97º on Aug. 2, 2006.
--By Richard Koeneman, WGN Weather Center Meteorologist
WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling and the WGN Weather Center staff provide daily coverage of weather in the Chicago area.
