Until late Tuesday evening, Chicagoans had shivered through 112 uninterrupted below-freezing hours. The sub-32° spell began last Friday morning at 5 a.m. It ended when the mercury reached 32° at 10 p.m. Monday evening at O’Hare and broke above freezing reaching 33° at Midway. Readings were expected to rise several additional degrees overnight and hold into the first hours of Wednesday. However, the area swings back into the firm grip of arctic-origin air Wednesday night. Daytime temperatures retreat from early low 30s, settling to 20° by nightfall then to single digits late Wednesday night.
Tuesday morning lows returned to sub-0° levels for a second straight night across Chicago’s western suburbs (i.e. Aurora -3°, Rockford -2° and -1° DeKalb) while readings at O’Hare bottomed out at 7°—the third consecutive single digit low there. Only four times in the past 106 years have three single digit lows occurred back to back this early.
--By Tom Skilling, WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist
WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling and the WGN Weather Center staff provide daily coverage of weather in the Chicago area.
