I live in the suburbs of Chicago. My kind of town, Chicago is. Well, we have the Sears Tower which is one of the tallest skyscrapers in the U.S. (World?) Except the windows tend to fall out of some of our buildings in the windstorms. But we have the "mag mile" of the finest shopping and eating in the U.S. 'Course, the sales tax just went up to a ridiculous 10%. (Yes, I know there are places with higher sales tax, but not as many as there used to be!) But the best thing is Lake Michigan. Miles and miles of beautiful lakeshore, which, for a small or not-so-small price, you can walk along. (Unless you happen to own property there, which means you're probably related to Donald Trump or Bill Gates. And people who actually live on the lakeshore don't walk along it.) But the lake is also a source of the Chicago metropolitan area's weather woes.
"Lake effect" is a term you learn early in life when you live in this area. Lake effect snow is wetter and heavier than snow from the west. I've lived through many snowstorms in this area, including the Blizzard of '79, during which the city of Chicago failed to clear roads and rails, causing the city and many of it's suburbs to shut down. Well, I have discovered that this past winter (Dec. 1, 2009 to Feb. 28, 2010) has been the "snowiest winter since 1979."
"Snow has fallen on Chicago four of every seven days since Dec. 1, according to the National Weather Service. The city used 90 percent of its 390,000 tons of stored salt, and had to buy an additional 250,000 tons to rebuild the stockpile," said Matt Smith, a spokesman for the [Chicago] Department of Streets and Sanitation.
I said something similar in at least one of my Winter-dissing blogs. It's nice to be right once in a while.
Anyway, as many people have heard the expression "March comes in like a lion, but goes out like a lamb," I half expected March to be snowy, too. It wasn't too bad, though. We had some at the beginning of the month. But then we came to the week of March 15 through March 19. Some of the most beautiful weather we've ever seen and it wasn't even Spring yet, officially. (Meteorological Spring started March 1.) Glorious sunshine chased away my blues, in temperatures in the upper 60's, the windows were opened for a little while and I got outside and started cleaning the flower beds.
Then came Spring, March 20. It snowed--all freakin' day! It didn't accumulate much because the roadways were still warm from the past week. But cars needed to be cleaned off and it was that wonderful "lake effect" stuff. Okay, to be fair, today, while not as warm as last week, it was sunny and pleasant. Didn't quite know what coat to wear. My lightest weight winter coat was too warm, but my old spring coat was too light. It was a conundrum.
Well, Chicagoans would say, it is Springtime in Chicago, "where you run the heat in the morning, the air-conditioning in the afternoon and open the windows in the evening." You can reverse that order and it will still apply. Actually you can mix it up any which way, and it will still reflect a Spring day in Chicagoland. It is, in a word, unpredictable.
So last week was a tease. We get a lot of teasing from the weather all year 'round, but especially in the Spring. I will personally hold the memory of last week close and hope it doesn't fade too much before Spring comes to stay. Of course, there's no guarantee it ever will. Last year we never had Summer. Went right from a crappy Spring into a decent Autumn.
Someday I'll move where it's sunny and dry. But then my skin will dry out and turn leathery. Oh well, by the time I actually move, my skin will already be dried out and leathery!
Info on the Blizzard of '79 courtesy of Joe Carroll of Bloomberg.com.
