City’s first official 32 degree arrives -- 3 weeks later than year ago

With fall colors visible but past their peak, and temperatures in what has been an amazing run of warmth this season finally in decline, Autumn, 2007 is entering a new phase. Friday's official 32-degree low at O'Hare came 22 days later than the first frost a year ago and closed the books on one of the four longest growing seasons at that site since 1959. A growing season is defined as the period of time between the last frost of spring and the first frost of fall. The 200-day period between frosts this year was 31 days longer than the long-term average of 169 days.
New Englanders are battening down the hatches Saturday. The remnants of Hurricane Noel have evolved into a mammoth, rapidly deepening non-tropical storm paralleling the East Coast moving north. NOAA scientists sent a new pilotless hurricane research airplane into the system Friday to probe the system's 80 m.p.h. low-level wind field. Cape Cod is to be hardest hit Saturday with 60+ m.p.h. gusts and driving rain.
--By Tom Skilling, WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist