“When will it finally get warmer?” It’s a question being posed more and more often by Chicagoans growing increasingly impatient with the area’s lengthy spell of chilly temperatures. Computer models suggest a pattern change that heralds moderating temperatures, though not a return to above-normal readings.
Today is the anniversary of the world’s greatest single-day rainfall: 73.6 inches of rain poured down on Cilaos, La Réunion, in the Indian Ocean during a 24-hour period on March 15-16, 1952. Incredibly, this amount is more than twice Chicago’s annual precipitation total (36.27 inches), and it was but one 24-hour period within an eight-day spell of intense rainfall occurring in association with the passage of a tropical storm across La Réunion. Total precipitation during that period, Mar. 11-19, 1952, was a phenomenal 162.59 inches. That’s over 13 feet of water, and also a world record for that time interval.
WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling and the WGN Weather Center staff provide daily coverage of weather in the Chicago area.
