Evanston, Tuesday, July 19

Jody and I decided to go to Evanston today, partly because she will not be in town this weekend and mostly beause the conditions looked good for that spot which we have missed greatly so far this summer. The one issue was that we were not able to get an accurate reading on what the water temperature would be. Indications were that it would be somewhere between 56 and 66, the former not really swimmable. But Jody wanted to see for ourselves so I was happy to tag along. It turns out the answer was "all of the above". When we got to the beach we were happy to see about three people in the water around the beach area without wetsuits or even caps. And they were swimming backstroke, so it must be balmy. But in fact for most of our swim the top 8 inches was in the middle 60's, I had one reading slightly over 66. But then there was a thermocline with much colder temperatures. Taking a vertical position in the water the water on our feet was very possibly no warmer than 56. We now knew why the people at the beach were on their backs, this was the position where they would mostly stay in the warmer thermocline. In addition to the layers there were also pockets some where the warm water went down much farther and some with no warm water at all. We stopped at a point midway on our route with a warm pocket, but a couple feet away it was frigid. So the old saying "If you don't like the Chicago weather wait an hour and it will be different" could be replace by "If you don't like the water temperature move a few feet."

Otherwise it was a very nice swim, bright sun, very calm water but not glassy, and the bottom, which is farther away this year, was visible for the entire swim. There was a slight fishy smell which is promising because fish have been largely absent recently. We did a wall to wall swim and just enjoyed how much nicer this is than Ohio Street. We were happy we came.