Dear Tom,
September 1979 was very dry. Wasn’t the following winter exceedingly snowy?
— Ron Planer, Chicago
Dear Ron,
Chicago’s snowiest winter season, with 89.7 inches of snow, was the winter of 1978-79, the winter before September 1979. Incidentally, that September produced only 0.01 inch of rain, the driest month recorded in Chicago.
The following winter (the winter of 1979-80) produced a near-normal snowfall of 42.4 inches. The dry pattern continued through the early part of winter, with less than a foot of snow (11.9 inches) falling through the end of January. Then snowfall increased dramatically during the second half of winter, with 14.7 inches falling in February, 11.6 inches in March and 4.2 inches in April, raising the season’s total to 42.4 inches, slightly more than the normal of about 39 inches.
