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Category Archives: Weather

Bob Newhart’s dreary 1970s Chicago

In the credits and the background of The Bob Newhart Show, Chicago is invariably dreary, with uniformly gray skies. It’s as if the show were set in a perpetual early winter, after the autumn is bright with color and before the winter is bright with snow.

This is how Chicago really looks in spring and parts of summer:

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or this:

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and, all right, occasionally this:

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June 30, 2011: When all hail broke loose

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When all hail broke loose

Midwestern thunderstorms frighten me. Perhaps I took The Little House on the Prairie books too much to heart, but one day after I’d been in Chicago a while, I began to imagine that the winds blew harder the lightning streaked brighter, and the thunder boomed louder than at home in western New York. When I thought back to the storms at home, I remembered mostly what we called “sheet lightning” — no visible streak, just masses of clouds flashing with diffused light. Sheet lightning would never strike us, I believed. Living in a trailer, I was more afraid of wind.

Since living by Lake Michigan, I’ve paid more attention to the weather — at first, not by choice, but because some weather systems demanded attention, swooping in from the west to drive out the sunshine. Sometimes it’s just a cloud or two blotting out a little of the light or a freshening breeze; sometimes it’s an entire front visibly advancing, not unlike the onslaught of the crystalline entity in “Silicon Avatar” (Star Trek: The Next Generation). Sometimes it’s a milquetoast of a thunderstorm. It flashes, booms, blows, and rains a bit, then moves over the lake, leaving no ill effects behind except for a few drenched joggers and dog walkers.

Then there’s the storm of June 30. The unpredicted storm of June 30.

When I came home, I thought about changing for the pool. Even as I walked, a few clouds rolled in, and something in the air changed, but I was still considering it because there were no severe weather watches or warnings from the National Weather Service. I looked, but I didn’t see any predictions of what was to come. I was tired, though, and thought I’d wait until an evening when it didn’t look quite so much like rain.

Between 7:30 and 8 p.m., it seemed to be getting darker than it should have been for the time of year and day, even with an overcast sky. That’s when I noticed the cloud front above.

Wow.

By a little after 8 o’clock, the sky had turned a midnight blue. That’s when I heard and felt it.

Hail hitting the windows.

It bounced off so quickly that I couldn’t see how large it was — probably not that big — but the relentless racket made me afraid that the windows would break. The rain, right behind the hail, blew sideways from the east, with some even getting between the window panes. The two trees in front of The Flamingo tossed.

Being alone, I was starting not to like this.

After what seemed like a long time, but was probably at most 10 minutes, the hail stopped, although the rain banged against the glass almost as loudly. Between the hail and rain, and with a little anxiety mixed in, I gave up on watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and headed for the bedroom. The lightning continued for what seemed like hours.

The next morning, I saw many small and a few large tree branches down, including a significant one from the tree across from the bus stop. Overall, the damage didn’t seem that bad at first, although later I saw more large branches that had been torn off trees.

When I came home that evening, I could see from a half block away that the gate at The Flamingo had been covered with caution tape. As I passed by to go to the front, I could see why — one of the two pines along the sidewalk had been uprooted and then had fallen across the cabana roof, denting the edge slightly. It’s the first storm casualty I’ve seen in the garden.

Later, I learned the storm hit only select areas, including, unfortunately, the Garfield Park Conservatory, where the damage is described as “catastrophic.” If you can, please do what I did. Make a donation today to help with the cleanup and repairs and whatever needs to be done to save the plants, especially the ferns.

Memorial Day

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J set aside Memorial Day to visit his paternal grandmother’s grave, which he’d learned is in Saint Adalbert Catholic Cemetery in Niles. After a sunny early morning and stormy late morning/early afternoon, he picked me up.

Saint Adalbert Catholic Cemetery is enormous, larger than I would have expected. If you hadn’t known the northwest region of Chicago was heavily Polish, you’d have only to try to read the names on the thousands of tombstones. There are non-Polish names — J’s grandparents’ included — but I didn’t see many during our brief drive toward the section he’d been told to look for, or later on the way out.

And you can’t miss the names because so many graves aren’t marked by basic, flat, in-ground stones like those of my parents in Pennsylvania. The cemetery is dominated by a wealth of impressive monuments, statues, and crypts. Later we noticed a monument seller conveniently located across the street. Also across the street there’s an expansive florist shop. J noted that the Polish seemed to have done very well for themselves.

As it turned out, his grandparents are buried in a section of modest flat markers, his grandfather’s adorned only with his WWI service and a cross. We didn’t notice any other family markers nearby. He doesn’t know why they came to be buried here, other than that they were north siders and Catholic.

Given the size of the cemetery and the occasion, I was surprised not to see more people or more flags. On Memorial Day, the cemeteries where my parents and my aunts are buried are filled with flags, placed by a local organization at the grave of each veteran. There are a lot of veterans in the central Alleghenies.

Our next stop was the Chicago Botanic Garden. By this time, the weather had turned perfect, but the grounds were nearly empty. After a jaunt around the Rose Garden and a brief rest on a bench, where every mosquito in the vicinity zoomed in on me and my legs, we walked to Evening Island and the carillon, both of which I’d see only in the distance. Stupidly, I had never realized that you can walk there. Why I thought it was a forbidden place I cannot explain.

A robin flew in front of us to a small tree, carrying something large in its bill. I was trying to point it out to J when suddenly, from a nest in the crook of the tree, three mouths shot up. The robin made an attempt to stuff them, but perhaps either intimidated by their insistence or our presence, it flew back toward the water, where it seemed to have found a good spot for foraging. The moment it left, the mouths withdrew into the depths of the nest — just as J had gotten his camera and lenses sorted out. He hadn’t seen them. And, while he was fiddling with his backpack, a chipmunk crossed in front of us. I teased him that someday he’ll have his camera out taking photos or videos of some mundane thing, while bears, mountain lions, eagles, and other creatures line up behind him, out of range of his lens, to watch and laugh. He also missed some large birds (herons?) flying overhead, but at least he saw and photographed the red admiral I pointed out on the leaves of a tree.

He thought there would be a carillon concert, but they start in June. Our timing was perfect, though — the 7 o’clock hour chimed just as we were approaching.

In the berm between parking lots, J noticed a bird that I couldn’t identify at first. It was head on, and the colors weren’t true in the shade. As he was snapping away (and mentally debating getting out the big lens and tripod), an adult robin hopped over and shoved something in the other bird’s maw. Our mystery bird was a fledgling robin. Through the large lens, I could see its pinfeathers. It was at that awkward stage between infancy and adulthood, neither helpless nor mature — the avian equivalent of a gawky teenager. The parent soon wandered off, but Junior continued to stand around expectantly.

Walker Bros. Original Pancake House was closed for the holiday, but I (for one) got my fill of comfort lasagna at Rosebud of Highland Park, which made me sleepy for the long ride home. I felt strange after the long holiday and variable weather.

And so back to the inanity.

31 May 2010

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