Frosty Monday Morning

Tuesday night and Wednesday night could see patchy frost.  This can be worrisome for the sensitive vegetation that has been growing lately. 

Whenever a Frost Advisory is issued, cover up plants before the sun sets to help retain heat near the plants. A Freeze Warning is issued when low temps are expected to be 29-32°. When a Freeze Warning/Watch is issued there is little you can do to protect plants. If you can move sensitive plants inside, do so because the freeze will likely kill them, depending on the severity of conditions.

Cool Canadian air continues to fall into our laps beyond the 7-Day forecast.  

We’re stuck with a stubborn trough in the jet stream and accompanying upper-level low.   Here is the predicted 6-10 day outlook starting Saturday April 28 through Wednesday May 3:

2022-23 Seasonal Snowfall Update

On Saturday most of our precipitation fell in rain form but O’Hare clocked 0.1″ of snow there. That brings our monthly snow total now to exactly a half inch of snow. It’s still below normal for the month—which is typically our 5th snowiest month in Chicago.

The snow season itself has been a bit lackluster with only now 20.2″ of snow for the whole snow season that started last October. This places it in 12th place for least snowy of our snow seasons if the snow season ended Saturday. The previous snow season (2021-22) had the record late start of December 28th and wrapped up on April 18th. About 17% of the US is under measurable snow—that’s actually up from last week by about 4%.

April so far has some serious highs and lows in Chicagoland—which is typical for the fourth month of the year around these parts. Four days in a row in the 80s has only happened one other time this early in Chicago’s 150+ weather history. Despite the gloomy downturn in temps the month so far has seen significantly warmer afternoons than cool ones.

And while we’re down about an inch of rain for the first three weeks of this month—we’re starting off the garden / farming season with zero signs of drought in northern IL or IN. The same cannot be said for areas on the Great Plains to the west of us.