Here’s a look at the warmest, coldest, wettest and snowiest Valentine’s Day in Chicago, going back to 1871.
Data is from the National Weather Service’s Chicago office and measured at the city’s official recording site, which has been O’Hare International Airport since Jan. 17, 1980. For almost a century prior to that, sites around downtown Chicago, the University of Chicago and Midway International Airport were used to gather definitive weather data.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Love bites — delicious Valentine’s Day recipes from our archives
Warmest
The record high temperature for Chicago on Feb. 14 was 62 degrees in 1954. The warmth brought a larger number of people to outdoor attractions including the Brookfield Zoo, which was visited by an estimated 6,000 people that day. The number of people “feeding peanuts and cookies to the animals” at the zoo was twice that of the previous year, then-director Robert Bean told the Tribune.
The normal high for Valentine’s Day in Chicago is 35 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
The coldest high temperature on Valentine’s Day was just 8 degrees, which was recorded in 1879 and 1943.
The high was 26 degrees in 2025.
Coldest
Chicago experienced its lowest Valentine’s Day temperature in 1905 with a recording of minus 11 degrees. It was the lowest of six negative-degree lows recorded on Feb. 14 in almost 150 years. Though the frigid weather was not front-page news, there were several instances in the Feb. 15, 1905, edition of the Tribune describing fires started by overheated furnaces.
The normal low on Valentine’s Day in Chicago is 20 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
The low was 3 degrees in 2025.
Wettest
Valentine’s Day has been mostly dry with no rain or just a trace recorded during 103 of the past 155 years.
Precipitation of half an inch to 1 inch has occurred five times since 1872, according to the National Weather Service.
In 1950, almost an inch of rain fell on Chicago — the most ever recorded on Feb. 14. The precipitation was part of “one of the worst ice storm beatings (Chicagoland) has ever taken, and counted its loss in millions,” according to the next day’s Tribune.
Just 0.15 of an inch fell in 2025.
Snowiest
Since 1872, snowfall of three inches or more has been recorded just three times on Feb. 14.
A record snowfall of 8.3 inches fell in 1990. The storm brought “a fierce combination of relentless winds and biting snow that left rush hour travelers stranded for hours on snarled roads and expressways, or sitting helplessly at a virtually shot down O’Hare International Airport,” according to a story in the next day’s Tribune.
Less than an inch of snow fell in 2021, but snow depth was estimated at 15 inches — the highest snow depth for the day since 1979.
Just under two inches of snow fell in 2025.
Sources: National Weather Service Chicago; Tribune archives and reporting
