Chicago Storm

Several damage reports down that way as well, so seems valid.

FWA G78MPH with that line of weak convection moving through.

Made it down to 27 here this morning. .

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Down into the low-mid 30's across NE IL and SE WI as of 1z. Northerly Island is down to 35 as well.

Any snow around here looking doubtful now. .

Looking increasingly likely the following happens... Frost for portions of the area Thur night/Fri morning, freeze/hard freeze for the entire area Fri night/Sat morning, and isolated/scattered rain/snow showers Fri. Then looks like a chance precip ends as snow with the clipper-like system in the vicinity of Sun, before another frost/freeze for the two nights following it. I wouldn't say any record is a lock for this period, but there are a few that will be close...such as the record low max on Fri and record low min on Sat.

Just like that high of 70 on April 25th was gonna be the last 70+ day of April...only to hit 76 three days later, on the 28th. .

Protests over the stay at home order starting up downtown today.

Our in-house magic 8-ball has spoken.

While we are in imagination mode...

2.05” backside rain at ORD. .

1.19" of rain at ORD thus far today.

A period of high winds looks likely from later this afternoon into Thursday morning. Looks like 50-60kts at 925mb edges in along the Lake Michigan shore counties, so will likely end up with 50-60mph gusts for those areas, with 35-50mph more common inland.

The main storm system will really wrap up across the Lakes tomorrow... While early day high temps will be in the 50's tomorrow, temps will likely drop into the 40's the rest of the day, with a lengthy period of rain and wind from late morning into early tomorrow night. Some guidance has upwards of a few inches of rain across N IL/S WI.

Today is going just about as expected, with widespread clouds and convection festering across the main area of focus. Best chance of anything will probably be from that current E IA line, if it matures a bit to the east.

Tomorrow still looks like a low-end risk day. Cloud cover/shower debris issues will be too widespread and significant. Only the HRRR's are interesting.

Tue looks like a marginal-slight worthy risk for areas near/south of I-80 in IA/IL/IN. Beyond that, I had been mentioning elsewhere for a while now that severe chances would likely increase for the Plains/Midwest for first weekend of May into the first week of May...and we have now been consistently seeing signs on longer range guidance that will likely be the case.

Saturday looks like the last day with highs in the 40's for a while.

Things have sort of plateaued for a while now, so I find that hard to believe.

Widespread 40-60mph wind gusts this afternoon and evening across WI/N IL/E IA, with the convection moving through along/ahead of the cold front. Even a few isolated higher gusts, such as 69mph at MKE and 61mph at DPA. .

Haven't really been following it much recently, but the CFS is showing a fairly cool May for most areas. It has constant Eastern or Lakes troughing.

Chicago is now only ~1.5" away from normal snowfall on the season.

Make that 3.0”, not 2.8” .

Nothing should change until there is better testing in place.... Which is something that hasn’t happened yet, and doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon. .