The Ridge Historical Society
The Parade and the Weather
By Carol Flynn
“Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade” is a memorable line from a song in the musical “Funny Girl.”
While in the song the line is a metaphor about not interfering in another person’s life, it is a reminder that the weather always plays a part in any outdoor event like a parade.
Springtime weather in Chicago is especially unpredictable and changeable, and St. Patrick’s Day parade plans always factor in the weather. Uncooperative weather doesn’t mean the parade will be canceled; in fact, that would be a very unlikely occurrence. It just means some adjustments may have to be made.
The most rain that ever fell on St. Patrick’s Day when a parade was held downtown was recorded as 1.42 inches in 1965. The Chicago Tribune described the precipitation that Wednesday as a mixture of snow, sleet, and freezing rain.
City crews worked from the early morning on to clear the parade route, and despite gusts of wind up to 52 miles per hour, the parade went on as scheduled.
Thousands of people lined State Street to watch. Entries in the parade included 60 floats and 41 marching bands.
The mayor of New Ross, Wexford, Ireland, a guest of Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley, recorded the entire parade with his “motion picture camera.”
Other extreme weather days for parades when they were held right on March 17th include coldest and hottest.
The coldest St. Patrick’s Day on record in Chicago occurred on a Saturday in 1900, when the overnight temperature was one degree below zero. The newspapers reported the parade took place with a daytime temperature of sixteen degrees in blinding whirlwinds of snow and biting wind blasts. The streets were slippery frozen mud.
Despite the weather, or maybe partly due to it, enthusiasm was high on parade day. More than 3,000 people marched or rode in the parade, and many more lined the streets and cheered them on.
Irish and American flags and organization banners whipped wildly in the wind and musicians played with numb fingers. An Irish jaunting car, a special feature of the parade, “bounced and pitched and rolled and slid” through the frozen mud but made it to the parade’s end.
The parade lasted for two hours in that freezing cold.
The record high temperature for St. Patrick’s Day was 82 degrees in 2012.
Over 350,000 parade goers that day enjoyed the warm weather so much, reported the Tribune, that two men jumped into the Chicago River, which was dyed green for the day per custom. After they were fished out, one ran away and the other was ticketed by the police.
A visitor from Georgia lamented there was no snow; she was hoping to experience some Chicago winter weather. Chicagoans were not sorry to disappoint her. If she had been here 112 years earlier, she could have experienced the worst there was to have.
This year, the weather for St. Patrick’s Day and the South Side Irish Parade is expected to be 40 degrees with no rain, which actually fits right into the norm for this time of year.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!