The National Weather Service Chicago office released its report on the 2024-25 winter today, the first day of meteorological spring. Highlights:
- Average temperature: -2.6°C (0.4°C below normal)
- Total snowfall: 302 mm (450 mm below normal, 10th least snowiest)
- Total precipitation: 113 mm (42 mm below normal)
They go on:
At Chicago, the average high temperature was 34.1 degrees, which is 0.5 degrees below normal. The average low temperature was 20.5 degrees, which is 1.1 degrees below normal. The mean average temperature for the season was 27.3 degrees, which is 0.8 degrees below normal. 4.43 inches of liquid precipitation were recorded, which is 1.64 inches below normal. 11.9 inches of snow were recorded, which is 17.7 inches below normal.
Daily and top ten monthly records established for Chicago this past winter...
- December: None
- January: None
- February: None
The following top ten seasonal records were set for Chicago this past winter:
** 10th least snowiest winter on record with 11.9 inches of snow.
In other words, an average winter for the cold but a very mild winter for the snow. Nothing too extreme, nothing too nice, nothing too awful.
NCDC predicts a fairly average spring, starting with a fairly normal storm bearing down on us this week. Because it wouldn't be early March without a reminder that our weather doesn't get consistently nice until June.
We've got a classic weather event rolling through Chicago right now:
What makes it atypical is the low pressure over northeast Minnesota (980 mB) and the tight pressure gradient around it. So while the temperature at IDTWHQ has gone up 7.2°C (13°F) in five hours—2°C in the last hour alone—we've also got a bit of wind. O'Hare reports southwest winds at 16 kts with peak one-minute winds of 39 kts, which qualifies as a fresh gale.
But you see that blue line curving through Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming? That cold front will slide through Chicago overnight, bringing us below freezing for a couple of days.
For what it's worth, the normal temperature range for March 1st is -3.1°C to 4.9°C. We should get that entire range between 8pm and 3am tonight.
So this isn't really that unusual for Chicago. March has the most variable weather of any month here. That's why we dress in layers.
First, the temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ has gotten up to 10.5°C for the first time since 3:33 pm on Monday December 9th. If it goes up just 0.1°C more, that will make today the warmest day since Monday November 25th. Fingers crossed.
Second, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency returned to DNS this morning. Someone at the Department of Defense must have noticed that the government's maps had vanished and was able to get the DNS entries restored. In consequence, I have downloaded everything through Romania, imported everything through Comoros (except China; that's importing right now), and the automatic indexer has captured 274,194 new places for a total gazetteer size of 2,668,565 places. That will rise dramatically later today; there are 2.05 million records for China, of which the import tool has already saved 1 million.
Updates as conditions warrant.
Update: As of 2:29 pm the temperature hit 10.6°C for the first time since 1:49 pm on Monday November 25th. Today is officially the warmest day of the 2024-25 winter season!
Garmin periodically challenges its users to get active. About once a month they put out a distance challenge for walkers. This month, the challenge was to do a 4.8 km walk this weekend. Cassie and I just did that, as it turns out Jimmy's Pizza Cafe is conveniently 2.6 km away. It helps that we haven't had temperatures this warm (4.0°C) since just after 1pm on the 3rd.
Butters, however, did not like getting left behind. According to my security camera, she spent 18 minutes crying by the front door, took a quick stroll around my lower level, then went back to cry by the front door for another 10 minutes before going upstairs to cry in the living room. She gave up for a while, then returned to the front door for another 15 minutes, alternately crying and sitting quietly. I haven't watched the whole 54 minutes but I'd bet she was quiescent for less than 10.
I am sorry for my neighbors. Fortunately, the neighbor to the north is out of town. And frankly, the neighbors to the south have a 3-year-old boy who makes far more noise in the aggregate than any dogs I've ever owned (or looked after).
Tomorrow I'll go back to complaining about world events. Right now, I'm taking both dogs and my friend Kat's new book to Spiteful Brewing.
Butters, possibly traumatized by Cassie and me leaving her alone for almost half an hour yesterday, has decided to stake out my office:
Incidentally, this is what Cassie and I walked past in the local park yesterday:
We've had progressively warmer days since the temperature bottomed out Monday morning. We might even get above freezing today! I hope so, because I need a 5 km walk to meet a Garmin challenge this weekend. (Cassie will help with that; Butters, not so much.)
My friends have gone to a tropical beach for the week, which means I get a second dog for a few days. She has been here many times before (most recently on Saturday), so she knows the drill. Still, five minutes after her people left, Butters seemed resigned to never seeing them again:
By the time I woke up this morning, however, she seemed to have settled in just fine:
Walking the two of them together in this cold doesn't actually work, however. Butters hates cold weather; Cassie loves it. So Cassie wound up dragging Butters for half of this morning's walk, making all three of us miserable. After lunch I'll walk them again...separately.
The temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ has gone up all day, just surpassing yesterday's afternoon high of -11.3°C:
Of course, yesterday's actual high was -10.3°C, at midnight, and we won't hit that again until tomorrow. But by Friday we'll be able to walk outside without losing extremities, and by Sunday it'll even be above freezing. And then, in 10 days: spring!
There is one advantage to Arctic air over Chicago, though: the air is really clear.
Winter ends two weeks from tomorrow, but climate science and meteorology can only study nature, not command it. That explains why, despite ample sunshine, the temperature at IDTWHQ has stayed around -7°C since it leveled out this morning, and promises to shed another 8-10 degrees tonight. Then we're in for a few blasts of cold interspersed with warm days and some snow here and there for about a week before it consistently warms up.
Elsewhere in the cold, cold world:
Finally, Google has suspended comments on the label "Gulf of America" because of all the one-star reviews people gave the body of water. I realize Google just follows the USGS on American place names (same as Weather Now), but still, they could have slow-walked it (as Weather Now is doing).
I promised snow photos.
So far, it looks like we've gotten only about 25 mm of snow, though it continues to fall and will probably keep falling until the early morning. Cassie and I went out around 1pm, and I gave her a bit of off-leash time in the courtyard:
That is a happy dog. And we're about to go out again, because she insists on metabolizing food and water.
Tomorrow she gets to go to day camp and I get to go to my downtown office. One of us will have a lot more fun than the other.
We have a winter weather advisory until tomorrow at 3am, warning of "mixed precipitation" with snow accumulations of 75 to 150 mm. It has begun in earnest:
If I don't get so busy that I forget to do it, I'll snap another photo before the sun sets for comparison. Right now we've gotten maybe 5 mm of snow, with the temperature holding steady around -2°C, about 3°C below normal. Normal snowfall for February is 273 mm, so this shouldn't surprise anyone.