Chicago is a day away from breaking a weather streak that's lasted 146 years

pulse

February 27, 2017 3:52 PM

For the first time in its 146-year weather record, Chicago could go for all of January and February without seeing an inch of snow.

Chicago bean snow

When people ask what it's like to live in Chicago, I tell them, "Seven months a year, it's the greatest city in America."

The other five, of course, are often bitterly cold, snowy, and windy. And living there in the dead of winter, you learn to climb flights of steps coated in inches-thick sheets of ice that last all winter. Your hair ices over if you spend too long outdoors, brittle strands snapping off at a touch. You can go weeks in January and February without spending a comfortable second outdoors. When March rolls around, 25 degrees Fahrenheit becomes an excuse to break out the lightweight jacket.

But Chicago is having a weird winter. This month the city has experienced 18 days with highs above 40 degrees — a very unusual weather pattern in the Midwestern lakefront metropolis — and one six-day period, February 17-22, in which the daily high temperatures were 67 degrees, 70 degrees, 67 degrees, 69 degrees, 65 degrees, and 67 degrees.

That's not the most shocking part. Chicago is a wildly snowy city, where schools regularly stay open through snowstorms that would shut down other urban centers. It's typical for the city to be coated in unmelted snow for a whole winter, with a massive melt coming in the spring.

But this year Chicago has gone all of January and February without any snow accumulation — and it isn't expected to before the month closes Tuesday night. According to the local National Weather Service station, that's a first in the city's 146-year record.

Of course, the unusually warm weather hasn't been concentrated in Chicago. NOAA hasn't yet released its official report on the month's weather (usually the third coldest, after January and December), but much of the East Coast and the Midwest has experienced unusual or record-breaking warmth. Thousands of warmth record were set across the US from February 17 to 24, with just 41 cold records in the same period.

Still, a snowless January and February in Chicago is a truly shocking development.

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