Weather Forecast and Updates

Introduction to Weather Forecasting

If you’re planning outdoor activities around Chicagoland on this Memorial Day, you should be fine, because there’s no rain in the forecast.

But make sure to have warmer clothes, especially if you’re near Lake Michigan.

Temperatures will again be on the cool side Monday, with highs in some locations about 10 degrees below average.

You’ll find the warmest temps in areas to the south and west of Chicago, where highs may reach the low 70s. But further north, highs will stay in the mid-60s, even as low as the upper 50s close to the lake.

Winds will remain calm but will stay out of the northeast, creating the cooler lakeside temps.

There’s also plenty of sunshine around Chicagoland to start Memorial Day, but we’ll see increasing clouds into a mostly cloudy afternoon.

Tuesday and Wednesday look to remain cool, with rain chances increasing for Wednesday.

Then, finally, by the end of the week temps look to climb back toward seasonal averages (see more below).

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Looking Ahead

This current stretch of unseasonably cool weather for Chicagoland continues into a ninth consecutive day Monday, but it’s going to break soon.

The average high temp is in the mid-70s for this part of late May, but as you can see, we’ve been well below that since the start of last week (numbers are through this past Sunday):

We did have some warmth this month, but it was quite fleeting.

We hit our first 90-degree temp on May 15, which feels like a long time ago now. On our scorecard of temps of 80 degrees or warmer, we’ve racked up only a handful so far at O’Hare International Airport and a few more at Midway International Airport.

But for those yearning for more summer-like conditions, we have good news: Warm air is on the way!

Things look to take a turn toward at least seasonally average temps as we wrap up May and start June. Then things look to creep even above average for the first part of June, at least according to long-term forecast models at the moment.

June, the first of our summer months, shows average daily highs at O’Hare beginning in the mid-70s and elevating all the way into the mid-80s by the end of the month.

So even though it hasn’t felt like it lately, summer is coming.

That also means more sunlight, as we head into the longest days of the year around Chicagoland.

Drought Conditions

Temperatures aside, we could definitely use rain in Chicagoland, because lack of rainfall has been an issue this month.

May is typically our wettest month of the year, with about 4 1/2 inches of rain on average, but we’re way behind on that amount. Since Jan. 1, we’re down by 4 inches of precipitation overall, and some of that has to do with our lack of snowfall this past winter.

But we’ve also had a dry May, with only an inch of precipitation during a month when we usually get more than 4 inches of rain.

The dry weather really showed up this month in a visual way that we rarely see around here, too.

It was just over a week ago now that strong southerly winds picked up a lot of dirt from not-yet-planted fields in central Illinois and hurled it toward Chicagoland in 60-mph gusts as a dark wall of dust.

Dust storms are something we see more often downstate or out in more arid parts of the western U.S. The last time we had a big dust storm in Chicago was more than 30 years ago, and our biggest ever was part of the “Dust Bowl” atmospheric phenomena in the 1930s, almost a century ago.

But the event that happened a week ago last Friday was the first-ever Dust Storm Warning issued for the City of Chicago.

Former WGN Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling talks about Chicago’s dust storm

Not surprisingly, all of Chicagoland is under some form of drought at the moment. The USDA’s Drought Monitor, released every Thursday, places most of us in the area considered “abnormally dry” to “moderate drought.”

But there are far worse drought conditions on the Great Plains as we get deeper into planting season.

Water Temperatures

Lake Michigan water temps are on the rise as we approach summer, but they’re still very chilly.

Last weekend, we had our first 60-degree water temp along the Chicago shoreline so far this year. Since then, we’ve backed those temps off into the mid-50s.

The water is still dangerously cold. Water colder than 70 degrees can zap a swimmer’s energy very rapidly.