City's once-mild November takes a chilly turn

Chicago-area temperatures failed to escape the teens and 20s Friday. For eight
bone-chilling hours, from 1 through 8 a.m., windchills -- reflecting the combined effect
of the wind and cold -- hovered in single digits. Highs at O'Hare and Midway Airports
struggled to 29 degrees -- far from the 44-degree normal high -- the coldest daytime
readings here since early March. Long-term weather records reveal cold air of that
intensity doesn't typically arrive for another 10 days.
The series of cold blasts over the past two weeks have slashed nearly 16 degrees off the
month's average temperature, squelching the warmest November open of the past 31
years. Six days into the month, November 2008 averaged 57.8 degrees and ranked 4th
warmest of the past 137 years. That ranking has slipped an astonishing 72 slots as
November's average temperature has plunged to just 41.9 degrees. The month is now only
the 76th warmest of all Novembers since 1871.
Flurries are possible with a weak disturbance Saturday. But Sunday should burst into the
40s before cold air hits again with a possible switch from rain to wet snow late Sunday
night into Monday. It's conceivable some of the snow could stick.
--Tom Skilling, Chief Meteorologist, WGN-TV/Chicago Tribune