Dear Tom,
What was Chicago’s most extreme weather year?
Dean Athans, Winfield, Ill.
Dear Dean,
Hosting an array of extreme weather events, 1967 seems a strong candidate for this title. The year started out with a meteorological bang with the city’s all-time record “Big Snow” (23.0″) in January, followed by a paralyzing 6″ mini-blizzard in February. April 21 brought the area’s worst-ever tornado outbreak that killed 58. Torrential 4-6″ rains that fell in just two hours caused widespread flooding in the city and north suburbs on June 10, and in October, an F2 twister damaged the Portage area in northwest Indiana. In late October, the city was hit by one of the biggest early season snows on record when 4.4″ fell on the 26th and 27th. The year’s last extreme event occurred on New Year’s Eve, when the mercury plunged to -10(degrees), the city’s coldest year-end on record.
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Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.
WGN-TV meteorologists Steve Kahn, Richard Koeneman and Paul Dailey plus weather producer Bill Snyder contribute to this page.
