Chicago is about to get a “good thumping” of snow mid-week — its first of the winter — and while the accumulation isn’t expected to reach even half a foot, the timing of the storm will pack a significant punch, according to Gino Izzi, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service Chicago office. A winter storm watch has been issued for the Chicago area and much of northern Illinois from 9 a.m. Wednesday to 3 a.m. Thursday. The worst of the snowfall is predicted to hit between late afternoon and early evening, coming down at a rate of up to an inch per hour during the p.m. commute, Izzi said.
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“It’s about as poorly timed as you can imagine,” he said. Meteorologists will continue to refine the forecast and the snow total predictions, which currently range from a high confidence in at least 4 inches, to the lesser probability of up to 8 inches. Up until now, winter 2024-25 has been light on the white stuff. Chicago recorded just 2.4 inches of snow in December and 4.6 inches in January. WTTW News looked at the past 25 years of snow totals for Chicago and found that scant accumulation in one month rarely had any relationship to the next, or the winter overall. One outlier: the winter of 2013-14, which was snowy start to finish and wound up with a whopping 82 inches total. More common are years like 2000-01, when nearly 31 inches of snow fell in December, and then fewer than 4 inches in January and February combined. Or 2018-19, when 1.4 inches fell in December and 7.9 inches fell in April. That’s right, April.
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