Chicago's Snowfall History

[Chicago WX]

18.9" of snow has fallen at the Midway COOP this winter, all of it since December 1st.

December: 1.2"

January: 15.5"

February: 2.2" (1.6" on 2/11, 0.6" on 2/13)

With that in mind, I decided to look at the data at the Midway COOP (since 1928) and see what winters had less December-January-February snowfall totals than this one.

1930-31: 6.0"

1931-32: 16.6"

1933-34: 11.2"

1936-37: 6.2"

1937-38: 13.2"

1940-41: 18.2"

1941-42: 11.1"

1943-44: 15.9"

1948-49: 13.2"

1952-53: 15.6"

1953-54: 15.5"

1955-56: 16.6"

1957-58: 16.2"

1963-64: 16.8"

1982-83: 11.5"

1991-92: 15.8"

1994-95: 14.6"

1995-96: 18.3"

1997-98: 17.0"

2001-02: 18.1"

If we do season snowfall (July-February), here's the list.

1930-31: 7.5"

1931-32: 16.6"

1933-34: 12.4"

1936-37: 6.5"

1937-38: 15.9"

1941-42: 15.2"

1943-44: 16.1"

1948-49: 13.2"

1952-53: 15.6"

1957-58: 16.7"

1963-64: 16.8"

1982-83: 11.7"

1991-92: 16.6"

1994-95: 14.6"

2001-02: 18.1"

[Chicago WX]

Charts in post #1 and #2 have been updated. Some additional data has been added.

Note: all data taken from NCDC. In some cases, it may conflict with the data from the Chicago NWS site.

[Chicago WX]

Top 50 least snowiest meteorological winters (Dec-Feb) for Chicago. Snowfall totals taken from NCDC files.

19.5" for 2011-12.

[Chicago WX]

Looks like I nuked the other charts in this thread...I have some work in putting them back.

 

New edition to this thread is looking back at Chicago's top 10 snowiest seasons, and seeing how each one got there. First off, I have no daily data for 1903-04, 1917-18, and 1929-30...so I included three more seasons that I could find. In a nutshell, it's the number of events in each of the seasons above, separated by amounts. 0.1-0.9" means number of events that were in that range, and so on and so forth (all snowfall amounts/ranges in inches). I used hourly precip data to try to connect the dots on the ones I wasn't sure of...so this isn't a 100% foolproof chart, but I believe it to be pretty close. Everything prior to 1979-80 is from MDW, and the rest from ORD.