Dear Tom,
Since our snowstorm at the beginning of the year, we’ve seen the list of Chicago’s biggest storms, but the storm of April 1-2, 1975, does not appear. Where does this storm sit on the list? I remember it paralyzed the area.
Phyllis Hart, Wheaton
Dear Phyllis,
The list of Chicago’s heaviest snowstorms that we printed was a tabulation of all storms that brought at least 12 inches of snow to the city. Since the storm to which you refer was not listed, we checked the records to see if your memory was correct — and it is.
On April 2, 1975, northern Illinois was lashed by a storm that brought 9-12 inches of snow to the Chicago area. 9.4 inches was measured at Midway Airport and 11.1 inches at O’Hare. It was a wet, slushy, high water-content snow (1.13 inches water equivalent at Midway Airport, giving a snow-to-water ratio of 8 to 1), accompanied by northeast winds up to 31 m.p.h., and it briefly crippled transportation.
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Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His weather forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN News at noon and 9 p.m.
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