There is only 10 days left to meteorological winter. So far, there have been very few times we needed to break out the shovel. Our biggest calendar day snow was 2.4" on February 4th. There have only been a few days where we needed our heaviest winter coats. We only dipped below zero once this winter once back on January 21st with a low of -1°. Nearly 70% of days this winter have been at or above average.
Winter isn't over yet though and there are reminders of that this week, but nothing extreme.
Arctic air arrives tonight and combined with gusty west winds tomorrow the wind chill will dip below zero. We will see some snow later tonight into early Tuesday but probably under an 1" accumulation for most of us. The next shot of snow later Thursday into early Friday could add up to a few inches. The GFS model is a bit more aggressive (see above). The total snowfall accumulation projected from today through Friday is nearly 5". Taking out tonight and tomorrow's system snow and that means nearly 4" for the Thursday/Friday event. The European model is suggesting closer to 3" for later this week. Even with this snow, odds are we will end up well below average on snowfall this winter. So far we have seen just 10.7" at O'Hare or just 41% of average.
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