April colder than March, so what will May bring?
A month ago, Deerfield resident Rob Engelman played tennis outside wearing shorts — and sunscreen.
Last weekend, he played in two sweatshirts and sweatpants.
This spring's inconsistent temperatures persuaded Schaumburg resident Jack Metter to keep all of his plants in his greenhouse, rather than plant them outside, even though his flower bulbs bloomed weeks ago.
“I keep wondering, what's next?” Metter said.
We're all wondering the same thing.
The freaky spring weather is set to continue this week as we bounce between 30 and 80 degrees, making life difficult for allergy sufferers, gardeners and others.
April was colder than March, but that's not saying much, as last month was the hottest March on record.
“March would have been the seventh warmest April in history,” said ABC 7 meteorologist Mike Caplan.
Even though April felt colder, temperatures were actually above normal. As of Sunday, the temperature averaged 50.7 degrees, or 1.7 degrees above normal for the month, according to AccuWeather.
So, technically, April's been a warm month.
“We should be thrilled with that. But instead we're upset and wearing our jackets,” said State Climatologist Jim Angel, with the Illinois State Water Survey at the University of Illinois in Champaign.
April might have just felt colder, because we haven't had a temperature above 80 degrees since March 22, when it was 83 degrees, Caplan said. While temperatures dipped into the upper 30s last weekend, they're expected to turn summery and stormy, rising into the mid-80s Wednesday.
It's also been a drier-than-normal spring so far, with the last two months having just 4.33 inches of precipitation, which is 75 percent of the 5.76 inches that's normal for March and April combined, Accuweather said.
Adding to the weirdness are the wide temperature ranges we've frequently experienced across the suburbs. It's regularly been 60s in the western suburbs while 40s by Lake Michigan, or a 20-degree temperature change between the north and south suburbs, meteorologists say.
“There have been many times, this month in particular, where the southern suburbs have been 20 to 30 degrees warmer than in Waukegan and Zion,” Caplan said.
Of course, the big question now is, what's in store for this summer?
Angel said long-range forecasts predict a pretty typical summer for the Chicago suburbs.
La Niña, the cold waters in the Pacific Ocean that typically bring hotter and drier summers to the Chicago area, are gone, Angel said.
Caplan hesitated to predict the summer weather at this point but said that having had the hottest March in history isn't any indicator of what's to come.
“There is absolutely no statistical correlation between an unusually warm March and the corresponding summer,” he said.