The tulip bulbs in Marcy Stewart`s yard already have sent up leaves to peek at this peculiar January.
”It`s a little strange,” said Stewart, who lives in Will County and works as a horticulturist for the University of Illinois Extension Service.
”I don`t think I`ve ever seen anything up that early.”
So far, winter in northern Illinois has been so unusually mild that the tulips, like the optimists who keep carting out their golf clubs, are being fooled into testing the air for an early spring. Forecasters are optimistic, too; they say the winter will remain mild and dry.
Something seems amiss. Northern Illinois is known for its seasons. When one is shy, it`s noticed, and it affects the life cycle of everything from the aedes vexans (a floodwater mosquito) to the urban ice skater.
What is usually known around Chicago as ”Bear weather” is, this year, barely weather.
Hardware stores stocked with tools fit for battling an ice age are seeing a demand for grass seed instead.
”The mild weather is terrible,” said Fran Leitner, a cashier at Klein True Value Hardware in Chicago`s Lake View neighborhood. ”Snowblowers, salt and shovels are growing cobwebs.”
Meteorologists attribute winter`s timidity to El Nino, a global weather pattern that made winter of 1987 atypically mild and has returned to turn the season on its ear. El Nino-or `The Child,` because it usually occurs around Christmas-has caused the temporary warming of the Pacific Ocean near Peru and influenced weather around the globe.
The phenomenon has been blamed for heavy rains in previously parched California, for floods in Texas, even for a freak snowstorm in Israel.
It is uncertain how profoundly it will temper winter in northern Illinois, but since the region began feeling El Nino`s effects in December, the season has been unusually mild. The average temperature last month was 30.3 degrees, 2.6 degrees above normal, according to the National Weather Service.
Meteorologists also use a measure called ”heating degree units” to determine how warm or cold a given period of time is. The unit measures how much the temperature deviates from 65 degrees, selected as the temperature to which people might heat their homes.
So far, there have been 143 heating degree units in January, which is 71 units below normal. And forecasters expect the trend to hold.
El Nino, a phenomenon first discovered in 1924, is caused by a slight warming-usually only a degree or two-of surface water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. But these small alterations are enough to change the way the winds flow through the upper atmosphere, disturbing typical weather patterns. Instead of Illinois` winter weather coming from the north, as it does most winters, El Nino forces the weather from the west.
”This pattern is one that puts us into a warmer and drier period,” said Earl Finckle, president of Central Weather Service. ”It will be fairly mild through February, with only little ups and downs.”
Botanists and gardeners have already noticed swelling in buds on several species of woody plants, especially those that leaf out early.
Galen Gates, manager of the horticulture collection at Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, has spotted several signs of late winter: enlarged buds on Japanese maples, purple catkins on black alder, and snowdrop leaves pushing through the earth.
If mild weather continues to coax the plants out of dormancy, a hard frost could cause some plant cells to explode, damaging the plant. This is more likely to occur in local plants indigenous to Asia or Europe.
”Our native plant material is rarely faked out,” said Gates. ”They`ve had thousands of years to adjust to this.”
To birds, mammals and insects, mild winters can be a boon.
Populations of predators like coyotes, hawks and foxes find food more easily in an ”open” winter, leaving them healthier, and more productive, in the spring.
And even scavengers like raccoons, opossums and skunks would likely fare better if the winter remains mild.
”The harder the winter, the more mortality there is going to be from starvation and disease,” said Scott Garrow, a wildlife biologist with the Illinois Department of Conservation.
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Likewise, pests like fleas and mosquitoes could be more plentiful next summer if things continue to go well for them.
”The (mosquito) eggs that were laid last summer will survive at a much greater rate,” said Clark Wood, chief biologist for Clarke Outdoor Spraying Co. ”We are looking for an above-normal season.”
Humans and their pursuits are affected as well.
Although Chicago has erected the walls for an ice-skating rink on the undeveloped ”Block 37” across from the State Street Marshall Field`s, it awaits two successive days of 20-degree weather before it will be ready for skating.
Terry Levin, a spokesman for the Mayor`s Office of Special Events, was not worried. ”This is Chicago, it will get cold, and there will be skating on State Street,” he said with confidence Monday.
Skiing, hardly a Prairie State specialty even in normal winters, is another matter.
”When it`s brown outside, it doesn`t help business,” said Bob Olson, co-owner of Chicago`s Viking Ski Shop. ”But the people that know, know where to go to get snow. The serious skier will find snow.”
According to agriculture experts, it is too early to tell what El Nino might do to farming in Illinois, which suffered from drought last year. The prediction of lower-than-average precipitation, however, is not welcomed by farmers.
”There is no disaster looming, but the people need as many positive strokes as they can get, with the way things have been going,” said Jerry Clampet, statistician with the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
Forecasters acknowledge that the effects of El Nino remain mysterious, and are uncertain how the phenomenon will alter Chicago`s summer weather, which is known to be as extreme as its winters.
But winter is mysterious and resilient, too. Twenty-five years ago, during the blizzard of 1967, the skies flew open on January 26 and 27 and blew 23 inches of snow across Chicagoland.
The day before, the thermometer registered 54 degrees. The day before that, it was 65.