How Dry Has This Winter Been? Very
By Chuck Sudo in News on Jan 7, 2013 4:40PM
We mentioned in this morning’s weather post that it’s shaping up to be another dibs-free winter. While we’re happy your miscellaneous detritus is still inside your homes so far, the lack of precipitation (if we maintain this) won’t bode well for crops come spring and summer.
So how dry has this winter been in Chicago so far? The 0.4 inches we received Saturday that sent some into a brief Twitter frenzy pushed the cumulative snowfall total to 1.3 inches. Normally we would have seen 12 inches of snow by now and our current total lags behind cities to the south like El Paso, Little Rock and Oklahoma City. (If anyone from those cities is reading this, here’s how dibs work.)
The last time Chicago had seen a stretch of winter this dry was in 1944, when the cumulative total crossed an inch Jan. 8. And we won’t see a sudden heavy snowfall to catch us up to the average. Barring an Act of God, Chicago will break the record of 319 consecutive days without an inch of snow fall in a calendar day Wednesday. The last time that happened was from 1939 through early January 1940.