The rain has finally moved into Illinois this morning. According to the National Weather Service, widespread heavy rain is expected to continue in Illinois over the next 3 days. Here is the forecast map for Tuesday morning showing a large storm moving across the central US. Rain is likely from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to the western Great Lakes. Snow is likely in the Plains states (areas in blue). However, we will likely be too warm in Illinois to see snowfall.
After a slow start to the snowfall season in Illinois, we are now catching up. Heavy snow fell across northern Illinois over the weekend and more snow is arriving today.
The Chicago NWS office has a nice write-up on the recent historic winter storm that stretched all the way across Illinois and into Indiana. We can call it a historic winter storm because it was the fifth largest in Chicago history with 19.3 inches reported at O’Hare airport.
Here are our snowfall departure from average as of a week ago and as of this morning. Northern Illinois went from a deficit of 1 to 8 inches to a surplus of 1 to 8 inches in green and 8 or more inches in blue. And more snow is falling as I write this so some of the deficits across central Illinois may be erased soon.
January 2015 in Illinois was cooler and drier than average. The statewide temperature was 25.4 degrees, 1 degree below average and the 53rd coldest on record. However, it was not nearly as cold as last January when the average temperature was 19.3 degrees and ranked as the 16th coldest on record.
The statewide average precipitation for January 2015 was 1.53 inches, 0.5 inches below average. Because of dry weather in November, December, and January, the US Drought Monitor introduced “D0” in northern and western Illinois. As I explained in an earlier post, this is not a great concern yet because of the low demand for water in winter but we are watching the situation.
Snowfall ranged from less than an inch in the far south to 10 to 15 inches north of Interstate 80 (first map). That results in above-average snowfall in the northern half of the state and below-average for the southern half (second map). However, this was far less snow than January 2014 (last map) when most of the state was covered with 10 to 25 inches of snow. Continue reading “January 2015 in Illinois – Cool and Dry”
So far, November has been much colder and drier than average. The statewide average temperature is 34.6 degrees, which is 9 degrees below average.
The statewide average precipitation (rainfall + water content of snow) was only 0.6 inches, about a third of the average through this date.
There have been astounding snowfall totals in places like Buffalo, NY, and some significant snowfall in Minnesota and Wisconsin. However, Illinois and most of the surrounding states have had far less snowfall (first map) in November. Many sites in the state had 1 to 2 inches except for a stretch between Quincy and Chicago with less than an inch.
The modest snowfall totals in November so far are not that unusual. Average snowfall totals for the month are generally less than an inch south of I-80 and about 1 to 2 inches north of I-80 (second map).
