In Chicago, it’s summer in February

February is usually frigid perfection for the ice skating rink in downtown Chicago’s Millennium Park, a favorite winter break for tourists and local families that stands in the shadow of the reflective sculpture known as the Bean.

Tuesday morning the ice rink was melting.

Under an intense sun and an air temperature of 70 degrees, water slowly dripped from the empty ice rink, flooding the surrounding concrete. Baby birds splashed happily in the water holes. The ticket counter was deserted and apparently closed that day.

Chicago’s winter — or lack thereof — reached an unnerving peak Tuesday, as meteorologists predicted the city could break a 48-year-old high temperature record.

It felt like summer all over the city: the windows of the apartments were pushed open to catch the warm breeze. Restaurants set up tables and chairs on sidewalks for outdoor lunch, a rare sight in February in Chicago.

The lakeshore was teeming with runners, cyclists and couples strolling hand in hand.

“We expected it to be very cold,” said Ana Marchal, 41, a doctor from Cádiz, Spain, who arrived in Chicago on Monday for a vacation with her husband Rolf Hartmann.

They had planned to spend their holidays indoors, shopping, visiting museums or attending Blackhawks and Bulls games.

Instead, they walked along the beach, looking delighted and slightly perplexed. They stopped to take a selfie at Lake Michigan, which is usually icy and foreboding this time of year.

“How beautiful,” said Mr. Hartmann. “It looks like the sea.”

“It’s colder in Spain than here,” said Dr. Marchal.

Others found the weather ominous.

Shailaja Chandrashekararao, a social worker who moved from India to Chicago last year, had just jogged six miles in the city. She said she would have liked to keep running.

“It was too hot,” Ms. Chandrashekararao said, tugging at the sleeve of her neon orange sports top.

Climate change has made summers in India unbearable and dangerously cruel, she said, turning Chicago into something of a weather paradise. But the city’s mild winter, coming on the heels of the hottest year on record in 2023, felt eerie and unpredictable.

“I don’t like this,” she said. “It’s actually quite crazy.”

Meteorologists warned that the warm spell would not last.

Forecasters said mild conditions this week in Chicago and around the Midwest were extreme, not just because of the warmth, but also because of what was to follow.

June-like temperatures will be a factor in bringing severe thunderstorms to the Chicago area Tuesday evening and overnight. Some of the storms could spawn tornadoes, forecasters said, with the most likely area stretching from Missouri across southern Illinois and northern Indiana to Michigan. Tornadoes that happen after dark can be more dangerous because so many people are sleeping.

However, the main threat from the storm system will be hail, possibly including hailstones as large as or larger than chicken eggs.

Unusually high temperatures in the Great Plains, along with strong winds, fueled wildfires in Nebraska and Kansas, which remained a threat Tuesday after forced evacuations this week.

And from Tuesday through Wednesday, temperatures in Chicago could drop by nearly 60 degrees, according to David King, meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

“It’s remarkable,” he said, noting that the last time the city saw such a rapid drop in temperatures was in the 1990s. “It’s just a wild time for the weather here in Chicago.”

A normal daytime high in Chicago this time of year is about 40 degrees. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, only 4.3 percent of the Great Lakes’ surface is covered by water covered with icewell below average.

The unusually warm and dry winter has hit tourism in the region, especially in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, where snow-dependent industries have suffered. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced last week that many businesses in northern Wisconsin — ski slopes, restaurants and snowmobile tours, for example — may qualify for a federal disaster loan program if they suffered losses from the mild winter.

The mild day on Tuesday already felt familiar, said Charles Jones, who oversees maintenance work at a residential building in downtown Chicago.

Mr Jones spent his break outside in short sleeves as people walked their dogs in the sunshine. He has lived in Chicago all his life, he said, and was used to the harsh winters the city is known for. But it was hard to remember the last winter when the cold had felt truly brutal – “a few years ago maybe,” he shrugged.

This winter is much like the last, Mr. Jones said, without much snow or many cold, frigid days. In recent months, he said, he has only had to salt the sidewalk twice.

“I don’t trust this weather, though,” he said. “You know there’s going to be a little snow before winter is over. It’s Chicago. It could be 70 and then jump to 30.”

Judson Jones reporting contributed.