Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on July 5, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 103 degrees (2012)
- Low temperature: 46 degrees (1972)
- Precipitation: 1.48 inches (1930)
- Snowfall: None
Walter Kale/Chicago Tribune
Cars are covered with a roof and other rubble after violent winds tore the top off a Northbrook garage on July 5, 1980. (Walter Kale/Chicago Tribune)
1980: Derecho! The temperature reached a high of 94 degrees — surpassing the previous high for July 5 — at 4 p.m., but dropped to a chilly 64 degrees when a cold front swept in around 11 p.m.
Winds reached 82 mph and left 100,000 homes in the area without power. The most violent wind report came from Northbrook, where half of a roof on a 20-car garage was lifted and then dropped, damaging at least seven cars in a parking shelter for a condominium. No injuries were reported in the Chicago area due to the storm.
2019: The Chicago Defender announced it was ceasing print publication and switching to a digital-only format. It still exists at chicagodefender.com.
The newspaper was founded in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, who called it “The World’s Greatest Weekly.” He encouraged Black Americans born and raised in the South — like himself — to move north during the Great Migration of the 20th century. More than two-thirds of the newspaper’s readership base was located outside of Chicago by the start of World War I, according to the Defender.
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