Hundreds spent their Labor Day at North Avenue Beach sunbathing and cooling down in Lake Michigan as a beach season that saw record-setting heat came to an end Monday.
The high for Monday was 92 degrees, with the humidity making it feel a slightly warmer 96, according to the National Weather Service, resulting in the hottest Labor Day since 1983.
Footballs and soccer balls flew through the air and into the water as families enjoyed the weather. Many beachgoers said Monday’s heat “wasn’t too bad.”
One boy ran across the sand with a large beach towel slung over his shoulder as it covered nearly half his body.
A group of kids played volleyball in the water. Farther from shore, others zipped through the lake on personal watercraft.
Monsheay Chess scooped up wet sand as she playfully instructed the children around her to build a sand castle.
Chess doesn’t come to the beach often, but she made the trip from west suburban Forest Park with her children and her sister’s children.
“The last couple of days [the weather] has been great,” Chess, 26, told the Sun-Times. “We love the heat in Chicago.”
Temperatures were expected to drop Tuesday night and will hover near the low- to mid-70s the rest of the week, the weather service said.
Last month, the temperature at O’Hare Airport reached 98 degrees, breaking Chicago’s previous daily high temperature record for Aug. 23 of 97 degrees, set in 1947, according to the weather service.
The heat and humidity made it feel like 116 degrees in some parts of Chicago — just 2 degrees shy of the highest heat index ever recorded in the city in 1995, according to the weather service. The heat index is a measure of what the temperature feels like when factoring in humidity.
Jennifer Galan sat on the beach as her 2-year-old son, Anthony, placed sand into an empty water bottle and shook it.
Galan and her son come to the beach from Little Village once a month during the summer. She told the Sun-Times she “enjoyed having fun time at the beach.”
Farther from the water’s edge, a group of people sat in the shade as the chorus to Drake’s “Hold On, We’re Going Home” featuring Majid Jordan played softly over a speaker.
Chess told the Sun-Times she appreciated the beach because it was easier to get to from the suburbs.
“It’s awesome, especially when you think about the other cities and they don’t have the beach right there near them.” Chess said.
Dominique Betancourt, another beachgoer coming from the western suburbs, shared some of the same sentiments.
“Just being so close to such a beautiful body of water, it’s not accessible to everyone,” Betancourt, 43, said.
She sat in a lawn chair as her husband and two girls, 11 and 9, played in the water nearby.
They hadn’t been to the beach all summer, but wanted to come out Monday as a “last hurrah” before the summer ends.
“I just let [my children] play,” Betancourt told the Sun-Times. “Sand building, chilling in the water, it’s actually nice because I don’t have to do any management.
“It’s just nice that [my children] can do their thing and [I] don’t have to worry about electronics,” she added. “They could just be kids.”
Contributing: Cindy Hernandez
