The Midwestern Regional Climate Center has extensive databases on daily temperature, precipitation, and snowfall across Illinois and the Midwest. This used to be a subscription-based system. In fact, one of my original jobs at the Illinois State Water Survey was working on the original version of this system, then called MICIS. In 2013 they revamped the system and made it free to everyone. All that’s required is a quick registration. The URL is http://mrcc.isws.illinois.edu/CLIMATE/ Check it out!
I use it for almost all my data, mapping, and plotting needs at work. For example, here is a plot for Chicago of daily temperature and precipitation so far in June of this year. This is a screen shot, the live version allows the pop-up window to move with the cursor.
