A balmy -1° at 2:00 this afternoon, with the wind chill a relatively mild -18°. And bright sunshine to boot. So there was no excuse for me not to end my two-day self-imposed "cooped up" status, and venture out to the am/pm two blocks away for my "usual": two double cheeseburgers ($1.89 each) plus two king-sized Snickers bars (2 for $2.22).It actually didn't feel too bad. In some perverse way, I'm actually beginning to enjoy the cold weather.
We hit an overnight low of -18° at O'Hare airport last night. And it got even colder in some of the outlying suburban areas. Just before I went to bed last night, at 4:00 a.m., I checked the Weather Channel forecast, which showed it had already dropped to -28° in Aurora, 40 miles west/southwest of Chicago. Today I heard that the overnight low in Aurora bottomed out at a bone-chilling -33°.
And those are actual temperatures, not wind chills. -33°? Now that's cold.
According to WGN-TV's Tom Skilling in today's Chicago Tribune:
"It was colder Thursday afternoon in Chicago than at the North Pole — 6 degrees below zero here versus 8 degrees. The day's unlimited sun had no impact on temperatures. Daytime readings didn't rise. Minute ice crystals — often incorrectly characterized as "steam" — rose from Lake Michigan. Temperatures as cold as Thursday's are extraordinarily rare here. The day's high of 1 below at O'Hare International Airport occurred at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Of the 50,404 high temperatures on record in 139 years of official weather observations, only 44 of them have registered 1 below or lower.
"Chicago's suburbs have experienced the area's coldest readings. Morning lows Thursday hit 24 below at west suburban Sugar Grove and Illinois' coldest reading — 29 below — occurred 80 miles west/southwest of Chicago in Ashton.
"Interior Alaska — bitterly cold just days ago — has had local 105-degree temperature increases, to the 50s — breaking records."
And more, from UPI:
"Chicago temps coldest since 1996... Most of the Chicago area shuddered through its coldest weather in nearly 13 years Friday but some relief from the subzero blast was in sight, forecasters said.
"A windchill warning remained in effect during the morning, with windchill readings of 25 to 45 degrees below zero."
It's going to warm up even more tomorrow, into the mid-20s. But more snow is coming along with the warmer temperatures. And it's not going to break freezing for at least the coming week. No thaws in sight.
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