At 57th Street Beach in Chicago, people laid out towels on the sand and waded into the calm water to escape the heat. Lifeguards watched over the crowded scene.
Ashburn resident Morhfia Wells went to the beach to cool down. Although he said the weather is tolerable so far, he’s not excited for the next few days of extreme temperatures.
“I’m not a big heat person,” he said.
Wells remembers the 1995 Chicago heat wave — the deadliest weather event in Illinois history, killing 739 people.
“It was just miserable,” he said. “I think I spent the majority of my time inside.”
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He expects to do the same this week.
Across Chicago and the suburbs, preparations were underway for dangerously high temperatures this week as officials urged residents to take extra precautions. The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning, effective from noon Monday through 10 p.m. Wednesday.
At a Monday news conference led by the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, meteorologist Mike Bardou of the National Weather Service office in Romeoville said the warning was issued in anticipation of three consecutive days with a peak heat index of 100-105 degrees F.
The heat index combines atmospheric temperature and relative humidity to determine how heat feels to the body.
“It’s been fairly infrequent that we see a three-day duration of heat like this. We’ve seen it two times since the beginning of 2013 up until this point,” Bardou said.
He said the sudden temperature swing doesn’t help.
“The other condition that we’re concerned about is that it’s been relatively cool. A lot of us are acclimated to relatively cooler weather, and this quick change to hot and humid conditions can definitely take its toll on the body,” Bardou added.
Overnight temperatures are expected to stay in the upper 70s to 80s, Bardou said, offering people little time to recover from the sweltering heat.
Sticky, muggy temperatures that persist into the night can pose a major risk to the health of anyone without access to effective cooling or adequate hydration. Officials are saying the anticipated heat will combine with “oppressive warmth at night,” leading to “hazardous conditions” — particularly for vulnerable populations like those who are pregnant, newborn babies, children, the elderly and those with chronic illnesses.
Trends in recent decades point to an overall warming of average temperatures in winter as well as fall, spring and summer, from human activities such as fossil-fuel burning that release heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
Other areas of Illinois, including Galesburg, Peoria, Bloomington, Springfield, Decatur and Effingham are also expected to experience extreme heat, according to a state news release. Central and southern Illinois are forecast to hit heat indices as high as 108 and 110 degrees, respectively.
“Illinois is facing several days of dangerous heat, and we urge everyone to take these conditions seriously,” said Ted Berger, director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and Office of Homeland Security. “Preparedness is key. Limit time outdoors during peak heat, check in on neighbors and those who may need extra assistance and know where your local cooling centers are.”
Officials also urge residents to stay hydrated, apply sunscreen regularly, wear light, loose-fitting clothing, take frequent breaks in shaded areas or inside air-conditioned buildings and limit activities during the hottest part of the day.
Across the suburbs, municipalities opened their libraries, police and fire departments and village and city halls as cooling centers.
In downtown Elgin, Gladys Quintana’s daughters, Olivia, 5, and Isabella, 2, had a lunch of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets Monday afternoon while sitting on an iron bench at the Festival Park splash pad. The temperature was about 90 degrees and climbing, but the shade trees, a slight breeze from the Fox River and the mist from the park’s splash pad fountains helped provide a little heat relief.
Quintana is originally from Elgin but has been living in Texas, where the temperatures regularly reach 100 degrees. Compared to that, this is tolerable, she said.
“The humidity is what makes it bad,” Quintana said.
Mike Cielocha, 72, and co-worker Mike Martino, 71, Naperville Park District employees, started the workday bright and early at 6 a.m. Their work included sanding the benches along the Naperville Riverwalk. The weather was tolerable in the morning, but by the afternoon, sweat was beading down their foreheads. They said they were used to working in this type of weather. The key to fighting the heat? A cooler full of Gatorade.
By about 1:15 p.m. on Monday, Cielocha said he had already handed out somewhere between 15 to 20 Gatorades and waters to his colleagues.
“It’s the least I can do,” Cielocha said. “I don’t want any guys passing out.”
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At a splash pad on the city’s Northwest Side in Logan Square, Oli Rodríguez and his toddler evaded the heat, a palpable thing for the family without air conditioning at their apartment, at a neighborhood splash pad. They both took a dip under the water feature, a shower of fountains in the shape of flowers.
“This is the ocean” for the toddler, Rodríguez said, before taking a break to play in the a nearby sandpit.
The break was short.
“I’m about to jump back in,” the 45-year-old said.
The Chicago Department of Family and Support Services will be operating cooling centers across the city this week. Park District, public library, police, senior center and City College locations will also be open for residents to cool off during their hours of operation.
The following DFSS community cooling centers will be open through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.:
- Auburn Gresham Center, 1140 W. 79th St.
- Martin Luther King Center, 4314 S. Cottage Grove Ave.
- North Area Center, 845 W. Wilson Ave.
- South Chicago Center, 8650 S. Commercial Ave.
- Trina Davila Center, 4312 W. North Ave.
The Garfield Community Service Center, 10 S. Kedzie Ave., will be open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day this week through Friday, which is a city holiday, according to a statement from DFSS. If the extreme heat persists into the weekend, the Garfield Center will also be open Saturday and Sunday. The city did not respond to questions about whether any centers would remain open overnight.
Last year, a Tribune analysis found gaps in the city’s cooling network, including the fact that in recent years, some of these spaces have closed during hot stretches around weekends and holidays, including the Juneteenth holiday last summer. Additionally, five of the community centers and all the senior centers were closed for a whole weekend during a heat wave in June 2025.
Salvation Army locations across Illinois will also operate as cooling centers this week, including the Chicago Freedom Center at 825 N. Christiana Ave. (open 24 hours) and Chicago Temple at 1 N. Ogden Ave. (open Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.).
Officials advised residents to drink plenty of water, stay inside if possible, check on friends and family and call 311 for city assistance.
In response to the heat wave, Chicago Public Schools announced that all summer programming will be held inside Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week. CPS also said school leaders will be taking extra precautions to keep classrooms cool and ensure that students stay hydrated.
Angela Green, DFSS commissioner, said the agency sent out robocalls to over 31,000 senior citizens on Friday, offering safety tips ahead of the heat.
Valerie Colletti, senior vice president of distribution operations for ComEd, said at the news conference that the agency has been preparing for the heat wave with increased staffing. She urged customers to report outages as quickly as possible by texting “ADD OUTAGE” to 266-33.
Veterinarians are also warning pet owners to take additional precautions with their animals during the heat wave. Vets recommend early-morning or late-evening walks when temperatures have cooled and the sun isn’t as powerful and to never leave dogs alone in parked vehicles, vets said.
On Chicago’s West Side, small groups huddled under the shade of trees on lawn chairs in Humboldt Park while others basked in the sun along the edge of the park’s lagoon. Near a park entrance, a mother and her young daughter purchased an ice cream cone from a mobile stand passing by.
Vlasta Kudina made the short trip out to Humboldt from her Avondale home to spend the day fishing with her 11-year-old son. He’s been asking to try out fishing — even looking up the activity on YouTube and finding all the necessary equipment on Amazon — for a while now, Kudina, 37, said as she held a teal fishing pole over the edge of the park’s lagoon.
The timing just so happened to work out Monday, and they weren’t going to let the heat stop them.
“This was the day that dad was off work, so we decided to give it a shot,” Kudina said.
While the outing made for an admittedly hot afternoon, Kudina tries to take advantage of the warm weather whenever she can, especially after making it through the winter months.
“In Chicago, it almost feels like we all earned the summer,” she said.
baiduhai’s Adriana Perez and Tess Kenny, the Elgin Courier-News’ Gloria Casas, the Naperville Sun’s Carolyn Stein and the Daily Herald and Aurora Beacon-News contributed to this report.
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