Thursday: Day 4 of seasonable temperatures; a far cry from 80 degrees of one year ago

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NOTE: This article is now an almanac of Thursday’s weather. We have published a new forecast story for Friday.

Thursday marked another day with near normal temperatures.

In fact, each day this work week has featured a high of 57 degrees or 58 degrees. The official 57 degree high temperature was a degree above normal but in sharp contrast to the 80 degrees on this date a year ago, one of the latest 80s to ever occur in Chicago.

Chicago Thursday sunshine

The near normal highs occurred with nearly 90% of the day’s possible sunshine as October is modestly sunnier than normal with just one day remaining.  

Thursday gusts

It was still fairly breezy on Thursday, but not nearly as windy as Wednesday when gusts peaked near 40 mph.  

Thursday U.S. highs and departure from normal

Lower 48 average for Thursday was only 59-degrees as much of the country cooled off. The only remaining heat was confined to the Southwest U.S. Highs only reached the 50s and low 60s across the Southeast, well below typical late October norms.  

Updated drought monitor from USDA

Drought continues to worsen in the latest update from USDA. Most notably was the increase in severe drought which jumped from 28% last week to 42% this week. 

Autumn rainfall update

Area rainfall deficit continues to grow as both O’Hare and Midway have only seen close to half the normal amount by this date. No sign that’s going to change in any big way over the next week or so.