It’s hot, Chicago, but it’s been hotter.
The first 100-degree day was recorded on July 16, 1887. When the Tribune reported on “how fashionable people solve the hot weather problem,” suggestions included reading a book indoors, going on a canoe excursion or leaving town for a cooler locale.
Chicago logged its highest official temperature of 105 degrees on July 24, 1934, but unofficial results have been even more extreme. Documented highs of 109 degrees during the Dust Bowl in 1934 and 106 during an oppressive heat wave in 1995 were set at other sites in the city.
Thankfully, 100-degree days are a rarity here. There have only been 65 of them, according to more than 136 years of data kept by the National Weather Service.
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Hottest temperature recorded in Chicago: 105 degrees (July 24, 1934)
“There were fifteen deaths in Chicago which were ascribed definitely to heat prostration,” the Tribune reported.
Just two days earlier, John Dillinger — dubbed America’s first Public Enemy No. 1 by U.S. Attorney General Homer S. Cummings — was gunned down by federal agents outside the air conditioned Biograph Theatre.
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“Of the estimated 350,000 persons who sought relief at beaches and pools, five drowned, scores suffered heat prostration, and thousands took home second-degree sunburns,” the Tribune reported.
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“On the first day of summer Monday, Chicago-area residents experienced two weather milestones,” the Tribune reported. “The thermometer at O’Hare International Airport read 104 degrees at 4:26 p.m., the second-hottest temperature ever recorded in Chicago. And it rained for the first time in nearly a month.”
” … on a day like Thursday, it seemed as though the sun was focusing all of its searing heat on the Chicago area,” the Tribune reported.
The day was part of a notorious heat wave that killed more than 700 area residents. That one sweltering week would change the way Chicago responds to and prepares for all emergencies.
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Though this benchmark has been reached five times in Chicago history, these two days were the most recent triple-digit temperatures. Six people died due to the stifling heat.
“There will always be some people who are very hard to reach,” Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said at the time. “It could be a person who is down on their luck, it could be a person who has good resources but no one to monitor them, it could be a person who doesn’t want to leave their home.”
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