We fall in love with Chicago every summer. This year’s weather has us wondering, are we on a break?

If you ask a Chicagoan what summer means, the answer might sound more like the testimony of a devoted cult member than a description of a season.

Some call it a movement; others insist it’s a lifestyle. Most agree, however, that the precious stretch between June and August reminds them why they put up with the rest of the year.

“There’s this energy in the air that’s indescribable,” said Lizz Hader, a Lakeview resident. “It’s truly magical, and everyone just feels it.”

Weather carries an outsize cost for a city that stakes so much on three short months, as hazardous smoke and relentless storms have made especially clear this year. Locals say each rained-out block party is a gut punch, never mind losing an afternoon of Lollapalooza to flooding or an Independence Day fireworks display to heavy fog.

Even worse, residents in the south suburbs and northwest Indiana have endured several tornadoes and extended power outages. Some in Indiana say they’re rationing gas and, at times, losing faith that the power will ever come back on.

And the “unprecedented level of damage” and “extensive recovery efforts” following the catastrophic storms on Aug. 11 led to the cancellation of the 2026 Gary Air Show, announced Mayor Eddie Melton.

Simmering beneath that frustration, experts say, is a discomfort that runs deeper than a bad forecast. The weather poses an unsettling question for a city that treats the season as both rite and reward: What happens if Chicago can’t count on summer?

“It comes with this sense of profound unease about what it means,” said Sarah Dimick, a Northwestern University professor who studies how climate change disrupts seasonal rhythms. “Not only for this particular year, but for all years going forward.”

More than 70 tornadoes have been confirmed across Chicagoland this year, shattering the region’s previous record as Illinois nears the all-time record for any state. In July, Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed the city for nearly a week, at times leaving Chicago with some of the worst air quality in the world.

Chicagoans’ resistance to being driven indoors is hardly new, said Julia Bachrach, a historian and preservationist who has spent her career studying the city’s outdoor space. As early as the winter of 1835, two years before Chicago became a city, residents were meeting to preserve stretches of lakefront as places for the public to gather.

“It’s an important theme throughout the whole city’s history,” said Bachrach, who was the Chicago Park District’s historian for more than two decades.

In 1858, an anonymous writer pleaded in a letter to the Chicago Tribune for a space where “our wives and children” could have “a place for promenade where they could get needful exercise and enjoy pure air,” one of many calls for outdoor infrastructure as the city grew. Today, Chicago manages more than 600 parks, dozens of beaches and around 240 field houses, with amenities ranging from public pools and ice rinks to golf courses.

What happens in those outdoor spaces is central to Chicago’s identity, Bachrach said, making a summer when weather has repeatedly rendered them unusable especially devastating.

Hazardous air quality canceled several Millennium Park Summer Music Series performances, and forced Ravinia Festival in Highland Park to call off a night Mozart performance and stream another show online. BoricuaFest in the Elgin area was scrapped for heavy rain forecasts in early August, while dozens of neighborhood celebrations and outdoor movie screenings have been canceled or cut short by threatening weather.

Summer traditions have faced a similar fate in suburbs battered by severe storms, where prolonged power outages and piles of downed trees continue to disrupt daily life. Evanston canceled a Downtown Summer Sounds concert at Fountain Square, and Naperville postponed its Fourth of July fireworks for more than a month and canceled the accompanying concert altogether.

“It just feels like we can’t catch a break,” said Alex Saddler, 29, who lives in River North but grew up in Lisle. “Everyone’s outside looking to have a great time and enjoy themselves, but plans keep getting canceled.”

Chicago summers usually offer more than Saddler can fit into a single day, with concerts, food festivals and block parties competing for his time. Watching those options disappear has put a damper on his mood, and the disappointment is mounting each time a single weather warning upends his weekend itinerary.

The National Weather Service has issued roughly 330 severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings across northeast Illinois and northwest Indiana this year, surpassing the previous annual record of 273 with four months still to go, meteorologist Gino Izzi said. Rainfall has also surged, with parts of the city and the southern suburbs receiving more than twice their average amount.

Statewide annual total precipitation increased by nearly 6 inches, or about 15%, between 1895 and 2019 — far outpacing the roughly 4% increase nationwide over the same period, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Climate projections suggest the state will only get wetter in the decades ahead.

“The frequency is jarring,” Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford said of the extreme weather that has repeatedly hit the region this year. “Oftentimes, there’s one big event in a year and then you get some time to recover, but it just hasn’t been that way.”

Repeated disruptions can create a more persistent anxiety than the fear caused by a single extreme weather event, which experts say is easier to dismiss as an anomaly. A devastating tornado may ultimately provoke less unease, Dimick said, than increasingly frequent rains that disrupt daily rhythms.

She calls the sense that seasons are not playing out as expected a “climate arrhythmia,” a disruption of patterns once considered reliable. The unease isn’t tied to a single temperature or date on the calendar, she said, but to a breakdown in the seasonal rhythms around which people organize their time.

“What we observe on our walk to work are the sort of things that are going to unsettle us in a more chronic way,” said Dimick, who teaches in Northwestern’s English and Environmental Policy and Culture departments. “We have the statistics, but it’s really what you feel in your bones that’s going to impact your sense of anxiety.”

The unpredictable weather has complicated Haylie Engels’ introduction to Chicago since she moved to the Gold Coast in March. After five years in scorching, dry Austin, the technology consultant was eager for the lush outdoor spaces and dips in Lake Michigan she’d heard locals rave about.

Tornadoes and relentless rain were a surprise, said Engels, whose Lollapalooza plans were canceled due to flooding. Another time, she took a bus to meet a group of women who had connected online in hopes of making new friends, but an approaching storm sent everyone home before the gathering was set to begin.

“That was really disappointing,” said Engels, 33. “I’m supposed to be running around on the lakefront half naked, living my best life, and instead I’m getting downpoured on when I try to go out.”

Still, Engels hasn’t let the weather keep her inside, and said she’s never been happier. If summers like this become the norm, she might reconsider her move, but for now, she’s staying put.

That watchfulness extends beyond Engels, experts say, and next summer could reveal how deeply this year has altered Chicagoans’ relationship with the season. Now that months of unusual weather have made climate change tangible in daily life, future disruptions may be harder to dismiss as anomalies.

People will be acutely aware of disruptions to traditions like Independence Day fireworks or the Air and Water Show, which Dimick said could become markers of how a changing climate is remembered from year to year. If those rituals become less dependable, climate could eventually factor into decisions about whether to stay, Dimick said, just as worsening hurricanes and wildfires are influencing some residents to leave parts of Florida and California.

“We see lots of stories of people who do choose to move, and we see stories of communities who stay put and then are grappling with how to rejigger their lifestyles,” she said. “It’s a matter of choosing your form of disruption.”

What that future actually looks like remains uncertain, weather experts say. Ford said tornadoes are particularly difficult to tie to climate trends because they are so sporadic, and this year’s extraordinary frequency is still considered more of an anomaly than a preview of what’s to come.

Wildfire smoke, however, could become an increasingly familiar part of Chicago summers, Ford said. The winds carrying Canadian air into the region are nothing new, but climate change is increasing wildfire risk to the north, making it more likely that those winds will bring smoke with them.

“This is an issue that’s not going away,” he said.

Scientists are more certain about rainfall, which has grown more frequent and intense as the climate warms. What that means for Chicago summer, however, is something residents will have to define for themselves.

Changing weather patterns could push some people toward isolation, experts say, but adapting to it can also be communal. Moments of extreme weather are especially important times to reach out to neighbors and offer support, Dimick said.

Hader, the Lakeview resident, has already begun adjusting to the shifting climate. She’s learned to find joy in checking the weather each morning, a ritual made more necessary by increasingly unpredictable forecasts, and rarely lets a rainy outlook spoil her mood.

“I don’t get to dictate my day, the weather does, and I love the mystery of it,” said Hader, 29. “It really makes you appreciate the few hours of sun.”

Her favorite memory this summer, she said, was walking to Navy Pier for the Fourth of July fireworks. As people around her complained about the heavy fog obscuring the show, Hader saw it differently.

“I felt like I was on a movie set, and even though we couldn’t see the fireworks, everything just felt like this magical block party,” she said. “I feel like it was this warm hug that Chicago gave me.”