Midwest Leaps From Fall to Spring--Maybe

Winter in the Windy City has been a wimp this year.

In fact there has been no real winter to speak of--something everybody is talking about. Spring was in the Chicago air Friday as the temperature climbed to 67 degrees.

“This was an awesomely mild winter, the best I can remember,” said John LaDuke, a Chicago Board of Trade clerk who was lunching in a park Friday just a few blocks from the financial district. “I’m playing golf tomorrow,” when the National Weather Service said temperatures may reach 70.

“I’m going to work in my garden this weekend,” said Jennifer Smith, a bibliographer at the Art Institute of Chicago. Still, she kept her red wool mittens on while eating a sandwich in a museum outdoor plaza.

Jogging Executive Approves

“I’ve lived here more than 20 years and this is the best winter I remember,” said Jack Barriger, a railroad executive who spends each noon hour jogging.

The frigid temperatures, bone chilling winds and general misery associated with Chicago from December through March have not materialized so far this season. Temperatures have been five to six degrees above winter normals, while snowfall has been well below normal.

Instead, Mother Nature has wrapped the snow belt around the waist of Eastern states. Washington, D.C., and New York City have each had more snow than Chicago, where there hasn’t been any snow on the ground for more than six weeks. For the first time in Windy City history, the National Weather Service could not measure a single flake in all of February.

Others Share the Warmth

Chicago did not bask in the sunlight alone. In most of the Midwest, winter so far has been little more than a chilly nuisance bridging autumn with spring.

“This is the Friday morning ski report from Wilmot Mountain. Due to the mild weather and lack of interest we have suspended operations,” says a recording at a ski resort north of Chicago in southern Wisconsin.

“It’s been fall-like all winter,” said Richard J. Hinds, a 35-year resident of St. Paul, Minn., known for its Winter Carnival.

Average temperatures for February in Minneapolis and St. Paul were 14 degrees above normal. “That is astronomical,” said Scott Tansey, a forecaster at the National Severe Storm Center in Kansas City. Snowfall in Minneapolis is 30 inches below normal this year. Cleveland, too, has had only half of its normal snowfall and warmer than normal temperatures.

Like Missing a Month

“By the end of January, we already had a climate more akin to the end of February,” said Wayne Wendland, Illinois state climatologist. And, he said, February was “March like.”

It was so mild in Chicago that consumption of natural gas used for heating about 800,000 Chicago homes fell 19.1% from last year, Peoples Gas reported.

Everything is ahead of schedule. Red-winged blackbirds returned to Chicago suburbs two weeks early. Tulips are pushing up through prematurely warm soil. Street cleaning, a Chicago rite of spring that generally begins when the snow melts at the end of March, has been under way for more than two months. Farmers, who normally apply fertilizer in late March or early April, have been in the fields for weeks. New construction, usually slowed by frost, cold and snow, is well ahead of plans.

“It’s almost unbelievable,” said Ronald E. Materick, president of Tishman Construction Corp. of Illinois. “For us, it’s been almost like working in the South.”

Winter Clothes Sales

Department stores, loaded with unsold winter merchandise, are having sales. The City of Chicago may end up with an extra 170,000 tons of salt, which the department of streets and sanitation had purchased to help melt snow on the city’s streets.

But pleasant as the weather has been in Chicago, it has not set many records. In more than 100 years of record keeping, the abnormally high temperatures were only high enough to make this the 17th warmest winter. And the low snowfall was only low enough to make it the 11th driest winter, reports Jim Purpura, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chicago.

None of the experts can say for certain why this has been an abnormal winter east of the Rockies. Most theories attribute the unusual season to warming of Pacific Ocean water surface temperatures, the El Nino effect.

And not everybody believes Chicago missed winter or that spring is here to stay.

‘Could Still Be Dumped on’

“March is still not out of the way,” said Mark Spreyer, an ornithologist at the Chicago Academy of Science. “We could still be dumped on.”

“It’s the usual spring flash in the pan,” said Daisy Farrell, a public relations consultant who carried her winter coat Friday by stuffing it into a shopping bag. “People who don’t know Chicago get all excited and put their winter clothes in mothballs and then at Easter we have a big snow storm and it’s back to zero.”