This morning had an 80% chance of rain with forecasted 20mph winds. Fortunately, we had a sliver of good weather and relatively calm conditions before all that mess moved in!
I made it out to L1 around 6:15am, and there were clear skies out to the east with some pretty amazing dawn colors. We’ve typically had great sunrises on Holy Saturday, and this one was no exception.
At around 6:35am, a bright red orb began to emerge very close to the water crib, giving everyone along the lakefront some spectacular visuals. This lasted all of about 10 minutes before the sun disappeared within a bank of clouds moving in from the west. But for a brief period of time, we had a picture perfect morning!
I had left my thermometer watch at home, and my pool thermometer wasn’t working. So I estimated a 40F lake temperature – just slightly below the air temperature. And while we had some slight chops, they were nowhere near the chaos that we had last week!
I eased into the lake and instantly noticed that there was no real discomfort on my exposed arms and legs. Cold yes, but no pain or stinging. This leads me to believe that we’ve finally cracked the 40F ceiling (yay!).
I ended up doing 1/2 mile total with the chops picking up significantly on the way back. This was due to the wind moving in during the brief time we were in the water. And this sustained wind sure made the post-swim experience quite harrowing!
Dawn colors
Sunrise!
Early Spring Lake Monsters
The problem with all these data sources is that they mostly query offshore buoy readings – not shore readings where we do all our swimming. I’ve been keeping year-round in-swim lake temps for almost a decade now, and there’s a pretty predictable pattern if you do a 5-day average and eliminate any anomalies such as the occasional 2-3 day temperature plunges.
With that as my disclaimer, the lake temperature is likley to hit the mid-60Fs by the second or third week of June and stay at that level or higher through the end of September. Here’s a recent plotting of the data to show the average ranges throughout the year:
https://www.facebook.com/openwaterchicago/photos/a.96050860921.90885.54050745921/10155500138640922/?type=3&theater
‘Been open water swimming off Addison break wall (lake side of north end of Belmont Harbor) for several years, last 2 summers from 2nd week of June to around 1st of October, no wet-suit because of FANTASTIC conditions.
However I’m afraid this Summer will be like 2015 – the coldest water conditions I can remember.
Would anyone at OWC know when any warming up to say about,64 might start to take effect?
I’ve tried retrieving last years data from NOAA to compare to now but hard to find.
Tried to get WGN’s Tom Skilling to comment but too general.
Any Leads Very Helpful
David No-Wet-Suitor