They only lasted 4 hours, but 70s finally get here

Chicagoans, deprived of 70-degree warmth for 178 consecutive days—35 more than
average—basked for four glorious hours Wednesday afternoon in the year’s highest
temperatures to date. It’s been 15 years since the city’s opening 70-degree
temperature of the season has arrived so late. Only six years since 1928 have
produced the first 70-degree reading any later. Midway, where the mercury first
reached 70 at 12:47 p.m., and O’Hare at 1:08 p.m., both topped out at 73 degrees.
Rockford managed the area’s highest reading of 76 degrees. Winds, clocked as high
as 50 m.p.h. at Lombard, helped transport the unseasonable warmth into the region,
raking much of the continent’s mid-section from Texas to Ontario in Canada. The
winds whisked dust aloft off bare fields, lending the skies over Chicago a slightly
orange hue.

YEAR’S STRONGEST SUNSHINE YET
The day’s uninterrupted sun was filtered through some thin, high clouds, but still
managed the strongest ultraviolet intensities of 2008. A dermatologist, Dr. Bryan
Schultz, said it would have begun producing a sunburn on unprotected skin in just 24
minutes at 1 p.m.