More articles from the Trib
On the deaths of children and ghost walks
Naperville horrified killing site a tour stop
Lemak kids' deaths still a sordid memory
By James Kimberly
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 14, 2006
The "Ghastly Walking Tour" of downtown Naperville offers spine-tingling tales of a phantom galloping horse and broken-hearted ghosts, but no story is as shocking to the community as word of the tour's newest stop: the home where Marilyn Lemak murdered her three young children in 1999.
"I'm appalled," said a former neighbor and close friend of the Lemak family, who asked not to be identified. "Why bring it all back to those of us who were here and have to relive all of that? I don't need to bring it up. Leave it alone."
Bart Madden, who now lives in the beautifully restored Victorian house with his wife and two young children, is upset too.
"I don't think legally we can do anything," he said, but, "this is so anti the spirit of the neighborhood."
But tour guide and business owner Diane Ladley, a professional storyteller and amateur actress, said she means no disrespect.
In fact, Ladley, 45, a native of Naperville who now lives in Aurora, said she added the tour stop last month because of repeated customer requests.
"To people in Naperville, [the Lemak] murder still seems so fresh. They don't realize it's been seven years," Ladley said.
"It's historical fact. I'm not telling them anything they can't read in the newspaper," she said. "Is it entertaining? Yes. But it also is a lesson in evil. You can't hide your eyes from evil. It doesn't go away."
Naperville Mayor George Pradel, also a personal friend of the Lemaks, was upset Friday at hearing about the tour.
"Just thinking about it makes me feel sad inside and brings back all the memories of what happened," he said.
Ladley's fledgling business, Naperville Ghost Tours Inc., also offers ghost-hunting classes, trolley tours and other walking tours of what she describes as Naperville's most haunted places. But it is only the Ghastly Walking Tour, targeted to adults, where the Lemak story is told. It is advertised on the company's Web site, www.napervilleghosttours.com, as "Mommy Lemak Dearest."
True horror stories
"Many of the tales on this tour are true horror stories--grisly, disturbing, bloodcurdling tales ripped from the headlines of Naperville's distant and not-so-distant past," the Web site promises.
The Ghastly Walking Tours cost $15 and are led by lantern light. As many as 25 people a tour step off from a downtown shop.
Ladley has the tourists stand in a North Central College parking lot across the street from the house when they hear the Lemak story. She said the guide tells the story straight with details gleaned from newspaper stories, police reports or Ladley's own memory from living in a nearby apartment at the time.
She said some people are moved to tears.
On March 4, 1999, Marilyn Lemak, then 41 and in the midst of a divorce from her physician husband, David, sedated their children, Nicholas, 7, Emily, 6, and Thomas, 3, and then suffocated them. She then attempted suicide by slitting her wrists.
Ladley said she is careful to tell her customers that there are no "known ghosts" in the former Lemak home. She tells people that the children are resting peacefully, that David Lemak has since remarried and moved out of state, and that Marilyn Lemak is serving a life sentence in an Illinois prison.
Because the children's father has moved away, Ladley said she thinks it's OK to tell the story. By contrast, she does not tell of the 1983 murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico because the girl's parents still live in the Naperville area, she said.
Ladley said she wrote to the Lemak home's current owners to tell them of her plans and asked them to call her if they had any concerns. She interpreted their silence as consent, she said.
However, Bart Madden said, "After reading the letter I didn't want to talk to this person."
"We were livid," said his wife, Maricela.
"I would have gone to the city, but I feel I don't have a leg to stand on," Bart Madden added. "People get to walk on the sidewalk."
Moved from Plainfield
The couple moved into the house from Plainfield in December 1999 and are proud of its rich history, he said.
"The history of this house goes beyond what happened on one tragic day," he said.
Attorney John Donahue, who represented Marilyn Lemak at her 2001 trial and her 2002 sentencing, said other members of the family still live in the Naperville area, and the idea of a ghost tour stopping in front of the home is "absolutely repugnant."
"If a hundred years go by, maybe you could talk about it at that point," he said. "There are family members who are alive and well. To have this thing revisited just brings out the nightmare for them." The Lemak family friend said the wounds are still fresh in the neighborhood too.
"It will never be enough time for those of us who still live here and were friends of the family and remember those kids," she said. "People in this neighborhood don't move away. We all remember."
This story is one I'll always remember. The murders happened my senior year at NCC; in fact, I used to park in the lot that is mentioned in the story. It's the Pfeiffer Hall lot, Pfeiffer being my academic home away from home, as it's the music building. That's where I first heard the news, in between music theory and choir. I'd always sit in the back row of choir, and as it got stuffy in that room, we'd usually crack a window even if it was chilly out. However, there were multiple helicopters flying overhead that day; the windows had to be closed. It was a gray, cold Friday, memorable because we had the musical, "No, No, Nanette," to perform that evening. It ended up snowing heavily as the night wore on. There were so many policemen and news crews that the school ended up making them coffee and cookies. I remember seeing Charlie Wojciechowski from Channel 5 up close and thinking how tall he was in person, and that his hair was a lot grayer than it looked on TV. I later found out that one of the house's first owners was a president of the college, and the owner previous to the Lemaks was my first flute teacher. The killings upset a number of students because several of them baby-sat the kids, and at least one professor had a child that went to the same school, just down the road. The story made national headlines; it was even in the National Enquirer. It was so strange to see a place I'd been around in there. Worse, people would drive by and stop you in the crosswalk asking for directions to "the murder house." That just seemed heartless to me. Three little kids died by their mother's hand and you want to drive by and point at it? If they knew enough about the story and had access to a map, they could have found it easily. I just wanted them to go away and let the poor little kids rest in peace.
Apparently, the ghost tour operator felt the same way:
Lemak house no longer on ghost tour
Storyteller apologizes after public outcry
By James Kimberly
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 18, 2006
Bowing to community outrage, the owner of a Naperville tour business said her "Ghastly Walking Tour" would no longer stop at the home where Marilyn Lemak murdered her three children in 1999.
In a written statement released late Tuesday, Diane Ladley, a professional storyteller and owner of Naperville Ghost Tours Inc., said she would honor the wishes of the home's current owners and stop telling the story she had advertised as "Mommy Lemak Dearest."
"I offer my heartfelt apologies to the family currently living in the Lemak house and anyone that I might have offended for causing them any pain," her statement read. "It was never my intent to hurt anyone, and I'm very sorry."
Ladley's tour costs $15 and takes adults on a 90-minute lantern-lit walk through "haunted" locations in Naperville's historic district. It stopped in a parking lot across the street from the Lemak home as Ladley or one of her employees told the story in grisly detail, including reading from a transcript of the 911 call that Marilyn Lemak made after the murders.
Complaints about the tour stop poured in after the Chicago Tribune reported on it Saturday. This week Ladley posted a statement on www.napervilleghosttours.com, saying she had been subjected to insulting and angry e-mails and telephone calls after the story appeared.
On March 4, 1999, Marilyn Lemak, 49, in the throes of a divorce from Dr. David Lemak, sedated and then murdered the couple's children--Nicholas, 7, Emily, 6, and Thomas, 3--before attempting suicide. She survived and is serving a life sentence in an Illinois prison. David Lemak remarried and now lives out of state.
Ladley said she added the tour stop this year after repeated customer requests. She said she believed enough time has passed to tell the story. Other true crime stories on the "Ghastly Walking Tour" happened at least 50 years ago.
But David Lemak's sister, Diane Hansa, who lives in Plainfield, said she was outraged and called the tour insensitive to the Lemak family still in the area.
"I'm glad to hear she's more or less come to her senses, if you will," Hansa said Tuesday.
Ladley said she had written the home's current owners to let them know of her intention to add the home to the tour, and they did not call her to say they objected.
When contacted last week, the family expressed outrage over the tour.
On Tuesday, Bart Madden said he was sick of the media attention and declined to be interviewed.
On unseasonably early snowfall
A flurry of records
The earliest measurable snowfall in the Chicago area accompanies unseasonably low temperatures that nearly match an 89-year-old record for Oct. 12
By Charles Sheehan
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 13, 2006
Mother Nature punctuated a run of mild fall weather Thursday with frigid temperatures and a white dusting that set a record for the earliest measurable snowfall in the Chicago area.
Schoolbound children zigzagged on city sidewalks with tongues hanging out as meteorologists measured the nearly third of an inch of snow that fell in a hurry at O'Hare International Airport.
The wintry practice run was part of a one-two punch that also nearly tied an 89-year-old record of 38 degrees for the coldest daytime maximum temperature on Oct. 12. The high Thursday was 39 degrees. "A low pressure system just developed and strengthened and quite a bit of cold air from Canada came down with it," said Tim Halbach, a Romeoville-based meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "That breaks the record for the earliest snowfall ever, dating back to 1871."
Getting brushed back with a snowball even before the World Series starts is sport in the Chicago area, which previously saw measurable snowfall on Oct. 18 in 1972 and 1989, when 0.2 and 0.7 inches fell respectively, Halbach said.
The heaviest snowfall Thursday, 1.5 inches, was recorded in Belvidere, just east of Rockford, according to meteorologists. Palatine received 1.2 inches.
In most places, any evidence that snow had fallen was gone by noon. But forecasters said the cold snap was expected to continue Friday, when there is another chance of flurries.
In a few circles that brought shouts of joy.
"I thought, this could be a good year," said Tammy Macholl, of the Marengo Snowgoers, a snowmobile club. "It was wonderful for like an hour. Then the sun came out and it's gone."
For others, like Gregory Pesavento of Elmhurst, the snow was enough to elicit that nagging question, "Why the heck am I living here?"
Pesavento's morning ritual of stopping in a doughnut shop for coffee with light cream was interrupted when someone shouted that it was snowing.
The nasty weather made him think of family, especially that daughter who lives in Florida, said Pesavento, 51.
The snow-removal veterans with the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation cast a weather eye on the crucial ground temperatures, which hovered around 40 degrees.
"Unless there was an unbelievable amount of snow that came down at a rapid rate, we knew it was not going to stick," said spokesman Matt Smith. "But it was a reminder that it's time to swap out those Cubs and Sox windbreakers for something a little more substantial."
With the snow there were also the inevitable fender benders.
Six weather-related crashes were scattered about the southern end of McHenry County in the space of an hour, including a head-on collision that left two people hospitalized, police said.
"I believe the lady slid on the snow," said McHenry County Sheriff's Police Sgt. Dan Reineking.
At the Morton Arboretum in Lisle and the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, the staffs had prepared for the cold snap.
"The sudden drop in temperature like we had [early Thursday] is going to drive the plants crazy, because they need a gradual drop in temperature, not a sudden drop," to prepare for winter, said Kunso Kim, a curator at the Morton Arboretum.
Kim and Tim Pollak, an outdoor floriculturist with the Botanic Garden, advised gardeners to bring less hardy plants indoors and to start laying mulch for cover if they haven't done so already.
There was little time to prepare--either physically or mentally--for the mid-October snowfall.
Julie Morrow of Glen Ellyn was caught as she tried to shove a large bag into her car in the parking lot of the Ikea in Schaumburg. Every year, there's denial about living in a place that can be miserable in November, she said.
"I said November, did you hear me?" she shouted, shaking her fist at the slate clouds.
Contributing to this report were Tribune reporters Liam Ford, Angela Rozas and Jeff Long and freelance reporter Mark Shuman.
I just really wanted this as a remembrance of last week. Why? Because I can say I was there when the snow fell "in a hurry" at O'Hare.
Colder, snowier weather's never hit earlier
Tom Skilling, WGN-TV chief meteorologist
Published October 13, 2006
It's got to really snow for it to accumulate when soil temperatures hover near 54(degrees) as they did Thursday. Whiteout conditions were reported for brief periods Thursday morning and early afternoon, a testament to the intensity of the snowfall. Flurries have reached Chicago earlier on ten occasions since 1885. But, never in 121 years of official observations has measurable snowfall occurred earlier in the city. Thursday's 0.3" at both Midway and O'Hare beat by 6 days the previous record for earliest measurable snow here--Oct. 18 in both 1972 and 1989. It also preceded by more than a month, Nov. 16, the average date on which measurable snow first typically occurs here. Thursday's 39(degrees) at O'Hare and 41(degrees) at Midway were the coldest readings ever so early in the season at each site.
A chill of Thursday's intensity rarely lingers this early. It's likely to be nearly two months before daytime temps as cold as Thursday's 39(degrees) high dominate.
----------
Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.
WGN-TV meteorologists Steve Kahn, Richard Koeneman and Paul Dailey plus weather producer Bill Snyder contribute to this page.
I will say I remember that snowfall in '89. I took a Polaroid of it because I'd never seen snow that early in the year.
Finally, a quote from an article about Ken Kesey, written by Robert K. Elder of the Trib:
"Don't ask for anyone's permission to be a writer--just write. Don't let anyone hold you back." (9-28-06)
Naperville horrified killing site a tour stop
Lemak kids' deaths still a sordid memory
By James Kimberly
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 14, 2006
The "Ghastly Walking Tour" of downtown Naperville offers spine-tingling tales of a phantom galloping horse and broken-hearted ghosts, but no story is as shocking to the community as word of the tour's newest stop: the home where Marilyn Lemak murdered her three young children in 1999.
"I'm appalled," said a former neighbor and close friend of the Lemak family, who asked not to be identified. "Why bring it all back to those of us who were here and have to relive all of that? I don't need to bring it up. Leave it alone."
Bart Madden, who now lives in the beautifully restored Victorian house with his wife and two young children, is upset too.
"I don't think legally we can do anything," he said, but, "this is so anti the spirit of the neighborhood."
But tour guide and business owner Diane Ladley, a professional storyteller and amateur actress, said she means no disrespect.
In fact, Ladley, 45, a native of Naperville who now lives in Aurora, said she added the tour stop last month because of repeated customer requests.
"To people in Naperville, [the Lemak] murder still seems so fresh. They don't realize it's been seven years," Ladley said.
"It's historical fact. I'm not telling them anything they can't read in the newspaper," she said. "Is it entertaining? Yes. But it also is a lesson in evil. You can't hide your eyes from evil. It doesn't go away."
Naperville Mayor George Pradel, also a personal friend of the Lemaks, was upset Friday at hearing about the tour.
"Just thinking about it makes me feel sad inside and brings back all the memories of what happened," he said.
Ladley's fledgling business, Naperville Ghost Tours Inc., also offers ghost-hunting classes, trolley tours and other walking tours of what she describes as Naperville's most haunted places. But it is only the Ghastly Walking Tour, targeted to adults, where the Lemak story is told. It is advertised on the company's Web site, www.napervilleghosttours.com, as "Mommy Lemak Dearest."
True horror stories
"Many of the tales on this tour are true horror stories--grisly, disturbing, bloodcurdling tales ripped from the headlines of Naperville's distant and not-so-distant past," the Web site promises.
The Ghastly Walking Tours cost $15 and are led by lantern light. As many as 25 people a tour step off from a downtown shop.
Ladley has the tourists stand in a North Central College parking lot across the street from the house when they hear the Lemak story. She said the guide tells the story straight with details gleaned from newspaper stories, police reports or Ladley's own memory from living in a nearby apartment at the time.
She said some people are moved to tears.
On March 4, 1999, Marilyn Lemak, then 41 and in the midst of a divorce from her physician husband, David, sedated their children, Nicholas, 7, Emily, 6, and Thomas, 3, and then suffocated them. She then attempted suicide by slitting her wrists.
Ladley said she is careful to tell her customers that there are no "known ghosts" in the former Lemak home. She tells people that the children are resting peacefully, that David Lemak has since remarried and moved out of state, and that Marilyn Lemak is serving a life sentence in an Illinois prison.
Because the children's father has moved away, Ladley said she thinks it's OK to tell the story. By contrast, she does not tell of the 1983 murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico because the girl's parents still live in the Naperville area, she said.
Ladley said she wrote to the Lemak home's current owners to tell them of her plans and asked them to call her if they had any concerns. She interpreted their silence as consent, she said.
However, Bart Madden said, "After reading the letter I didn't want to talk to this person."
"We were livid," said his wife, Maricela.
"I would have gone to the city, but I feel I don't have a leg to stand on," Bart Madden added. "People get to walk on the sidewalk."
Moved from Plainfield
The couple moved into the house from Plainfield in December 1999 and are proud of its rich history, he said.
"The history of this house goes beyond what happened on one tragic day," he said.
Attorney John Donahue, who represented Marilyn Lemak at her 2001 trial and her 2002 sentencing, said other members of the family still live in the Naperville area, and the idea of a ghost tour stopping in front of the home is "absolutely repugnant."
"If a hundred years go by, maybe you could talk about it at that point," he said. "There are family members who are alive and well. To have this thing revisited just brings out the nightmare for them." The Lemak family friend said the wounds are still fresh in the neighborhood too.
"It will never be enough time for those of us who still live here and were friends of the family and remember those kids," she said. "People in this neighborhood don't move away. We all remember."
This story is one I'll always remember. The murders happened my senior year at NCC; in fact, I used to park in the lot that is mentioned in the story. It's the Pfeiffer Hall lot, Pfeiffer being my academic home away from home, as it's the music building. That's where I first heard the news, in between music theory and choir. I'd always sit in the back row of choir, and as it got stuffy in that room, we'd usually crack a window even if it was chilly out. However, there were multiple helicopters flying overhead that day; the windows had to be closed. It was a gray, cold Friday, memorable because we had the musical, "No, No, Nanette," to perform that evening. It ended up snowing heavily as the night wore on. There were so many policemen and news crews that the school ended up making them coffee and cookies. I remember seeing Charlie Wojciechowski from Channel 5 up close and thinking how tall he was in person, and that his hair was a lot grayer than it looked on TV. I later found out that one of the house's first owners was a president of the college, and the owner previous to the Lemaks was my first flute teacher. The killings upset a number of students because several of them baby-sat the kids, and at least one professor had a child that went to the same school, just down the road. The story made national headlines; it was even in the National Enquirer. It was so strange to see a place I'd been around in there. Worse, people would drive by and stop you in the crosswalk asking for directions to "the murder house." That just seemed heartless to me. Three little kids died by their mother's hand and you want to drive by and point at it? If they knew enough about the story and had access to a map, they could have found it easily. I just wanted them to go away and let the poor little kids rest in peace.
Apparently, the ghost tour operator felt the same way:
Lemak house no longer on ghost tour
Storyteller apologizes after public outcry
By James Kimberly
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 18, 2006
Bowing to community outrage, the owner of a Naperville tour business said her "Ghastly Walking Tour" would no longer stop at the home where Marilyn Lemak murdered her three children in 1999.
In a written statement released late Tuesday, Diane Ladley, a professional storyteller and owner of Naperville Ghost Tours Inc., said she would honor the wishes of the home's current owners and stop telling the story she had advertised as "Mommy Lemak Dearest."
"I offer my heartfelt apologies to the family currently living in the Lemak house and anyone that I might have offended for causing them any pain," her statement read. "It was never my intent to hurt anyone, and I'm very sorry."
Ladley's tour costs $15 and takes adults on a 90-minute lantern-lit walk through "haunted" locations in Naperville's historic district. It stopped in a parking lot across the street from the Lemak home as Ladley or one of her employees told the story in grisly detail, including reading from a transcript of the 911 call that Marilyn Lemak made after the murders.
Complaints about the tour stop poured in after the Chicago Tribune reported on it Saturday. This week Ladley posted a statement on www.napervilleghosttours.com, saying she had been subjected to insulting and angry e-mails and telephone calls after the story appeared.
On March 4, 1999, Marilyn Lemak, 49, in the throes of a divorce from Dr. David Lemak, sedated and then murdered the couple's children--Nicholas, 7, Emily, 6, and Thomas, 3--before attempting suicide. She survived and is serving a life sentence in an Illinois prison. David Lemak remarried and now lives out of state.
Ladley said she added the tour stop this year after repeated customer requests. She said she believed enough time has passed to tell the story. Other true crime stories on the "Ghastly Walking Tour" happened at least 50 years ago.
But David Lemak's sister, Diane Hansa, who lives in Plainfield, said she was outraged and called the tour insensitive to the Lemak family still in the area.
"I'm glad to hear she's more or less come to her senses, if you will," Hansa said Tuesday.
Ladley said she had written the home's current owners to let them know of her intention to add the home to the tour, and they did not call her to say they objected.
When contacted last week, the family expressed outrage over the tour.
On Tuesday, Bart Madden said he was sick of the media attention and declined to be interviewed.
On unseasonably early snowfall
A flurry of records
The earliest measurable snowfall in the Chicago area accompanies unseasonably low temperatures that nearly match an 89-year-old record for Oct. 12
By Charles Sheehan
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 13, 2006
Mother Nature punctuated a run of mild fall weather Thursday with frigid temperatures and a white dusting that set a record for the earliest measurable snowfall in the Chicago area.
Schoolbound children zigzagged on city sidewalks with tongues hanging out as meteorologists measured the nearly third of an inch of snow that fell in a hurry at O'Hare International Airport.
The wintry practice run was part of a one-two punch that also nearly tied an 89-year-old record of 38 degrees for the coldest daytime maximum temperature on Oct. 12. The high Thursday was 39 degrees. "A low pressure system just developed and strengthened and quite a bit of cold air from Canada came down with it," said Tim Halbach, a Romeoville-based meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "That breaks the record for the earliest snowfall ever, dating back to 1871."
Getting brushed back with a snowball even before the World Series starts is sport in the Chicago area, which previously saw measurable snowfall on Oct. 18 in 1972 and 1989, when 0.2 and 0.7 inches fell respectively, Halbach said.
The heaviest snowfall Thursday, 1.5 inches, was recorded in Belvidere, just east of Rockford, according to meteorologists. Palatine received 1.2 inches.
In most places, any evidence that snow had fallen was gone by noon. But forecasters said the cold snap was expected to continue Friday, when there is another chance of flurries.
In a few circles that brought shouts of joy.
"I thought, this could be a good year," said Tammy Macholl, of the Marengo Snowgoers, a snowmobile club. "It was wonderful for like an hour. Then the sun came out and it's gone."
For others, like Gregory Pesavento of Elmhurst, the snow was enough to elicit that nagging question, "Why the heck am I living here?"
Pesavento's morning ritual of stopping in a doughnut shop for coffee with light cream was interrupted when someone shouted that it was snowing.
The nasty weather made him think of family, especially that daughter who lives in Florida, said Pesavento, 51.
The snow-removal veterans with the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation cast a weather eye on the crucial ground temperatures, which hovered around 40 degrees.
"Unless there was an unbelievable amount of snow that came down at a rapid rate, we knew it was not going to stick," said spokesman Matt Smith. "But it was a reminder that it's time to swap out those Cubs and Sox windbreakers for something a little more substantial."
With the snow there were also the inevitable fender benders.
Six weather-related crashes were scattered about the southern end of McHenry County in the space of an hour, including a head-on collision that left two people hospitalized, police said.
"I believe the lady slid on the snow," said McHenry County Sheriff's Police Sgt. Dan Reineking.
At the Morton Arboretum in Lisle and the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, the staffs had prepared for the cold snap.
"The sudden drop in temperature like we had [early Thursday] is going to drive the plants crazy, because they need a gradual drop in temperature, not a sudden drop," to prepare for winter, said Kunso Kim, a curator at the Morton Arboretum.
Kim and Tim Pollak, an outdoor floriculturist with the Botanic Garden, advised gardeners to bring less hardy plants indoors and to start laying mulch for cover if they haven't done so already.
There was little time to prepare--either physically or mentally--for the mid-October snowfall.
Julie Morrow of Glen Ellyn was caught as she tried to shove a large bag into her car in the parking lot of the Ikea in Schaumburg. Every year, there's denial about living in a place that can be miserable in November, she said.
"I said November, did you hear me?" she shouted, shaking her fist at the slate clouds.
Contributing to this report were Tribune reporters Liam Ford, Angela Rozas and Jeff Long and freelance reporter Mark Shuman.
I just really wanted this as a remembrance of last week. Why? Because I can say I was there when the snow fell "in a hurry" at O'Hare.
Colder, snowier weather's never hit earlier
Tom Skilling, WGN-TV chief meteorologist
Published October 13, 2006
It's got to really snow for it to accumulate when soil temperatures hover near 54(degrees) as they did Thursday. Whiteout conditions were reported for brief periods Thursday morning and early afternoon, a testament to the intensity of the snowfall. Flurries have reached Chicago earlier on ten occasions since 1885. But, never in 121 years of official observations has measurable snowfall occurred earlier in the city. Thursday's 0.3" at both Midway and O'Hare beat by 6 days the previous record for earliest measurable snow here--Oct. 18 in both 1972 and 1989. It also preceded by more than a month, Nov. 16, the average date on which measurable snow first typically occurs here. Thursday's 39(degrees) at O'Hare and 41(degrees) at Midway were the coldest readings ever so early in the season at each site.
A chill of Thursday's intensity rarely lingers this early. It's likely to be nearly two months before daytime temps as cold as Thursday's 39(degrees) high dominate.
----------
Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.
WGN-TV meteorologists Steve Kahn, Richard Koeneman and Paul Dailey plus weather producer Bill Snyder contribute to this page.
I will say I remember that snowfall in '89. I took a Polaroid of it because I'd never seen snow that early in the year.
Finally, a quote from an article about Ken Kesey, written by Robert K. Elder of the Trib:
"Don't ask for anyone's permission to be a writer--just write. Don't let anyone hold you back." (9-28-06)