Blog Article
Wisconsin's Best Day of the Week, Before Chicago Marathon Wind Arrives
Milwaukee-area towns post the week's top nice-weather scores today and Friday, but Chicago Marathon runners face gustier, cloudier conditions by Sunday.
Wisconsin Lake Towns Are Having the Best Day of the Week, and Chicago's Marathon Weather Already Knows It Won't Repeat
If you live anywhere near Milwaukee or Madison, step outside before you read another word. Today is the best weather day in the country, and it's not close.
Today: As Good As the Upper Midwest Gets Without Breaking 90
The towns ringing those two cities, places like Como, Delafield, Okauchee Lake, and Concord, Wisconsin, are posting scores between 97.0 and 97.3 today, the highest numbers anywhere in the Nice Weather data this week. Chicago, Madison, Dubuque, and La Crosse are all sitting at 92 and tagged Beautiful. Down in the desert, El Paso, Las Cruces, and Roswell are riding the same high pressure to their own Beautiful-tier afternoons.
Zoom out to the zone average and the Upper Midwest/Ohio Valley corridor scores 89.6, just 2.4 points under the top of the scale. Dewpoints near 49°F, 11 percent cloud cover, and essentially zero rain chance (1 to 2 percent) are doing the heavy lifting. So why isn't this Perfect instead of Beautiful? Two things. Highs only reach the mid-70s zone-wide (Milwaukee tops out at 62.6°F, Madison at 67.5°F), which caps the temperature sub-score at 86.9. And the zone's air quality index sits at 43, just over the strict AQI ceiling of 35 that the top tier requires. Everything else, sky, rain, humidity, is basically maxed out. It's a day held back by two very specific numbers, not by anything you'd actually notice walking around.
Friday: The Baton Passes East and South
Tomorrow, the same high slides east and expands. Columbus, Cleveland, Albuquerque, El Paso, and Reading, Pennsylvania all hit 92 and Beautiful, with Pittsburgh, Toledo, and Canton close behind in the low 80s. The zone-wide score ticks up slightly to 89.2, carried by nearly flawless precipitation and sky scores, with wind (9.6 mph average) and highs in the low-to-mid 70s as the only things standing between this day and the next tier up.
That's good timing for Albuquerque, which kicked off its International Balloon Fiesta back on October 3. Anyone still catching the tail end of it gets a genuinely Beautiful Friday for it: light wind, dry air, and sunshine.
It's also decent timing for Austin, which opens weekend two of Austin City Limits on Friday. Texas doesn't crack Beautiful this stretch, it's sitting in Nice territory (Austin 79.2, Dallas 79.6, San Antonio 79.3), and the reason is air quality rather than comfort. San Antonio's individual AQI runs around 72, Houston's near 65, numbers that are perfectly safe for a festival weekend but keep the zone out of the top tier. If you're out there dancing in the Texas sun, that's also a 6-plus UV index day, so sunscreen earns its keep along with the sunscreen puns on everyone's festival shirts.
For the full picture on where these tiers sit day by day, the Nice Weather outlook page has the live maps.
Why the Window Matters: Chicago's Marathon Gets the Other End of This
Here's the part worth planning around. The same Chicago that's scoring 92 today drops hard by Sunday, October 11, which happens to be Chicago Marathon day. The extended discussion pins Chicago at just 54.0 that day, anchoring the low end of a Decent tier dragged down almost entirely by wind, with gusts to 21.4 mph working through the Great Lakes as leftover circulation from Hurricane Isaias spreads inland. It's not a washout and it's not dangerous for runners, but it's a real step down from the glassy, dry Thursday and Friday that preceded it. Sunday's course weather will be breezier, cloudier, and less forgiving than today's lakefront towns are currently enjoying.
That same post-Isaias wind field is why the broader Days 4 through 7 outlook never climbs past Nice as a ceiling, even though it's technically allowed to go higher. The storm's remnant energy, plus a reinforcing system behind it, keeps gusts over 35 mph across a meaningful chunk of the central and eastern US into the weekend, per the WPC extended discussion, before precipitation coverage takes over as the main limiter by Tuesday.
The Quiet Story Underneath All of It
While the Midwest enjoys its moment and braces for the wind, the Bay Area keeps doing what it's done for three months straight. Petaluma, Fremont, San Ramon, Dublin, and a long list of their neighbors are sitting on 90-day live Nice streaks heading into this week's rankings, with Petaluma topping the weekly leaderboard outright. It's the most boring kind of impressive: no record highs, no dramatic cold fronts, just one mild, dry Pacific day after another.
Bottom Line
If you're within driving distance of Milwaukee, Madison, or the lakes around them, today is the day to use your patio, your trail, or your porch. Friday extends the favor to the Ohio Valley and the desert Southwest. By the weekend, the leftover wind field from Isaias takes the shine off the Great Lakes, so marathon runners and anyone with outdoor plans around Chicago on Sunday should plan for breeze and clouds rather than the crisp blue skies on display right now.