It's not often a set of mid-to-late July days produce temperatures which fail to break above 70-degrees. Yet that's what's predicted for the Chicago area Friday and Saturday. A mass of unseasonably cool air, which only days ago was 1,100 miles north of Chicago over Canada's chilly Hudson Bay, is riding well developed northwest winds associated with a buckling North American jet stream into the city. It's a development likely to deliver a good deal of instability cloudiness and passing light showers in addition to highs of 68-degrees Friday and 70-degrees Saturday--the city's coolest mid-to-late July two-day spell in 28 years. On only three other occasions over the 81 years in which temperatures have been recorded at Midway Airport have back-to-back days at this point in a summer failed to break above 70-degrees.
Thunderstorms erupted over sections of the Chicago area late Thursday. Radar scans put maximum cloud tops at 36,000 ft. Winds gusted to 60 m.p.h. as the storms swept across south suburban Crete Thursday evening. Earlier, 55 m.p.h. had been clocked west of the city in Glen Ellyn and 38 m.p.h. winds raked Midway Airport. Small hail accompanied some of the storms and downpour just at Plainfield totaled 1.17 inches in just 22 minutes right before 7 p.m. Valparaiso, Indiana was doused with 0.88 inches of rain in 20 minutes.
A buckling jet stream is behind the cool-off here and heat plagued Oklahoma and north Texas, where a powerful storm hit Thursday lowering Oklahoma City's temperature from the day's high of 99-degree to 82-degree by nightfall. Coming days will see the country's hot air shift west into the Rockies and Southwest while May level temps take over across into the weekend in the Northeast U.S.
Thunderstorms erupted over sections of the Chicago area late Thursday. Radar scans put maximum cloud tops at 36,000 ft. Winds gusted to 60 m.p.h. as the storms swept across south suburban Crete Thursday evening. Earlier, 55 m.p.h. had been clocked west of the city in Glen Ellyn and 38 m.p.h. winds raked Midway Airport. Small hail accompanied some of the storms and downpour just at Plainfield totaled 1.17 inches in just 22 minutes right before 7 p.m. Valparaiso, Indiana was doused with 0.88 inches of rain in 20 minutes.
A buckling jet stream is behind the cool-off here and heat plagued Oklahoma and north Texas, where a powerful storm hit Thursday lowering Oklahoma City's temperature from the day's high of 99-degree to 82-degree by nightfall. Coming days will see the country's hot air shift west into the Rockies and Southwest while May level temps take over across into the weekend in the Northeast U.S.
