Chicago’s meteorological/climatological winter 2022-23 season to close among the 9% mildest of past 153 years and 22% least snowy of the past 139 years

Two widely covered arctic outbreaks–one in December, another in January–were unable to unseat three month Dec through Feb meteorological/climatological season as among Chicago’s warmest and least snowy. The season closes Tuesday night at midnight with as say goodbye to February, 2023.

Full forecast details at the WGN Weather Center

63 of the winter season’s 90 days–that’s 70% of them–finished with daily average temps which were ABOVE NORMAL

A PLOT OF CHICAGO TEMPS for the 3-month Dec through Feb meteorological/climatological winter season.
Here’s how national temps over the past 90-days, which closely parallels the 2022-23 meteorological/climatological winter season, have tracked. Simply put, its been a colder than normal winter over the western half of the Lower 48–and MUCH WARMER than normal over the Eastern half of the continental U.S.

Here’s a preliminary month by month temp breakdown–including the Chicago temp departure for each winter month:

  • December, 2022: 29.1-deg (1.4-deg BELOW NORMAL)
  • January, 2023: 32.3-deg (7.1-deg ABOVE NORMAL)
  • February, 2023: 33.7-deg (5.2-deg ABOVE NORMAL)

The 3 month winter season snowfall comes in at a paltry 16.8″–only 57% the normal of 29.6″. The season has come up more than a foot short of normal snowfall.

Here’s how FULL SNOW SEASON tallies, which includes ALL the snow which has fallen to date since October, is running compared to normal.
Total 2022-23 snow season snowfall to date

Snowfall for the full 2022-23 season–which includes snowfall in October and November—has also come in at 57% normal. A total of 17.9″ of snow has fallen over the FULL 2022-23 SEASON—compared the normal to date of 31.3″–which means the full season has fallen 13.4″ short. Snow data in Chicago has been recorded since the 1884-85 snow season.