Brrrr! Early taste of winter hits the suburbs
Saturday's surprisingly “low high” of about 47 degrees during the day not only sounds like a dance move, it had people outdoors moving rapidly to keep warm with the sudden nip in the air.
“We're moving. We're doing hula hooping,” said Kerry Enright of Orland Park as she watched her daughter, 6-year-old Sarah, play with hula hoops and bean bags at the Naper Settlement's Oktoberfest in Naperville.
The weekend started with an unusual dusting of snow at O'Hare International Airport and across some Western suburbs, and forecasters said the weather was trending to break a record, given the normal daytime high for this time of the year is 68 degrees.
“It's possibly going to be the coldest high temperature for this date,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Amy Seeley, at the agency's offices in Romeoville. The coldest high so far was 48 degrees.
The turnaround was an abrupt change from temperatures in the 70s and up to the 80s occasionally in the last few weeks.
Joannie Rocchi, retail perennial manager at the Growing Place in Aurora braved the cold armed with long underwear. “This is Chicago,” she said, “if you don't like the weather, wait an hour and it changes.”
Although the cold could be a death knell for heat-loving annuals such as impatiens, there's still lots of life left in your garden, Rocchi said, explaining that October's an excellent time to plant shrubs or trees.
“The first frost is usually Oct. 10 but it may come sooner and that will finish the annual plants. It's the natural order of things,” she said.
“We're already helping people change their containers from summer plants to fall. Plants that can take (colder) temperatures are mums, ornamental kale — and pansies love the cold weather.”
If you've got tomatoes lingering, now's the time to take them in, either to ripen in the window or be turned into fried green tomatoes, she advised.
Drizzly rain fell off-and-on Saturday with winds gusting up to 30 mph, the National Weather Service said. For Sunday, more moderate temperatures were forecast with a high of 54, still 14 degrees below normal, and sunshine.
Daily Herald staff writer Marie Wilson contributed to this report