The final weekend of Meteorological Summer, 2005—which began June 1—is likely to end as the season began—warm. Not only are 30 daytime 90s on the books to date at Midway Airport and 22 at O’Hare (compared to just three last year), but 76% of days over the three month period have been warmer than normal. The season ranks 10th warmest of the 135 on record here since 1871. The 74.8° average is 3.2° above the long term average of 71.6°.
Hurricane Katrina’s downpours aren’t the only ones dousing sections of the U.S. Portions of Kansas have been walloped in the past two days by more than 6” of rain, continuing a trend which has dominated the summer there. Chanute recorded 6.42” of rain while Emporia was hit by 4.16”.
Any sunlight here Friday will aid in daytime heating. With higher humidities in place, some heavy t-storms threaten late in the day or Friday night.

The past three days have seen high temperatures across northeast Illinois fail to warm out of the 70s and today could be number four.
However, the strong Canadian high pressure air mass responsible for this cool down is slowly receding to the east. By this weekend the return of southerly flow should allow readings to once again approach the 90° mark. Warm humid conditions are then expected to persist into the middle of next week before computer models indicate the next cool off will occur.
Severe weather reports were few and far between Wednesday, but late in the afternoon Higgins, Oklahoma was hit with baseball-sized hail. Tropical Storm Katrina is slowly intensifying as it approaches the east-central coast of Florida, and latest forecasts have it reaching Hurricane strength just before making landfall later tonight. 10 to 15 inch rains could drench southern and central Florida.