Expect A Warm, Thunder-Filled Christmas Week
By Kate Shepherd in News on Dec 22, 2015 8:04PM
Chicago's getting a rare Christmas present from Mother Nature—a warm holiday. There won't be snowfall or any snow on the ground on Friday but the area will still see precipitation this week.
It will only be the 33rd Christmas of the past 146 years with an above 40-degree official high temp in Chicago, according to WGN.
The predicted high of 61 degrees on Wednesday is very close to the city's Dec. 23, 1962 record high temp of 62-degrees. That's 28-degrees above normal.
But there's a catch: We're also going to see above normal rainfall. It will likely be the 4th wettest Dec. 20 through Dec. 28 period in recorded Chicago history, with a predicted 0.76″ to 4.50″ of rain.
We might also be getting a rarer weather phenomenon: December thunderstorms! WGN's Tom Skilling is predicting December t-storms Wednesday afternoon and evening and more are possible over the weekend. We have El Nino to thank, the most thunderstorm days in Chicago happened in another El Nino year-1982. Usually December only produces a single thunderstorm day once every two years.
WGN produced a pretty epic Word Art-esque graphic to summarize our weird holiday weather week:
WGN