He acknowledged that he and other weather forecasters did not predict the ’67 blizzard, which dropped 23 inches of snow on the Chicago area.

“We said first two inches, then four inches then eight inches, but added, “we didn’t have radar back then.”

Wachowski also was the first to report the highest temperature ever officially recorded in Chicago, 106 degrees, during the heatwave of June 1995.

But he pointed out that that reading was taken in the shade of his instrument shed, as they all are, and the temperatures actually went much high in places in direct sunlight.

“I recorded temperatures much higher than that in the sunlight,” said Wachowski. “That is why people were collapsing in their homes,” he said.

While Wachowski said most of his neighbors know him as the “the weatherman,” one man doing work on his home got angry at first when he advised him to cover up the construction work because it would soon be raining.

“But he later came back and apologized. And he asked if I could let him know in the future when rain was coming,” said Wachowski.

He said he does have to to turn down all the requests from schools to bring classes over to see the equipment.

“The insurance wouldn’t allow it. It is just too dangerous.”

Asked for his thoughts on global warming, Wachowski said he agrees with Skilling that “the jury is still out.”

“Obviously, it appears that the Arctic is getting warmer and causing problems for polar bears and other animals. But are we doing it? It has become a big political issue.”

He said it is harder to come to a definite conclusion about weather changes locally, because of the location of the equipment being moved over the years, and all the farmland in the Chicago area being built up and paved over.

“That definitely changes the temperature. We don’t have a long-enough period to study yet.

He said that even the heavy snowfall this past winter wasn’t that unusual when everything is taken into consideration.

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