Snow, 'Frigid' Temps & Single-Digit Wind Chills Are Here To Stay

By Stephen Gossett in News on Dec 7, 2016 8:15PM

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if you braved the outdoors on Wednesday you already know that the freeze is on, with temperatures lingering in the 20s even during sunny hours.The bad news: it looks like this is just prologue to a truly bitter stretch of real-deal winter.

Those steadily below-30 temps mean that Wednesday was actually Chicago’s first subfreezing day since March 1, according to watcher of the skies Tom Skilling.

But from here, we go lower. Thursday and Friday are expected to be even frostier, with lows of 21 and 16 degrees, respectively, according to Accuweather. Some truly nast winds mean we can expect wind chills in the single digits, Skilling reports.

We get a weekend reprieve, but only in the most irritatingly optimistic manner of speaking, with temperatures expected to climb to a balmy 34 degrees on Sunday. But despite Saturday and Sunday’s very relative warmup, you probably won’t want to break out the lawn chairs—unless, that is, you’re planning on using them as dibs markers. As of Wednesday afternoon, Accuweather forecasts call for between one and two inches of snow on Saturday; and Sunday calls for “rain or snow shower in spots,” which sounds scarily close to our most dreaded weather phrase, “wintry mix.”

Next week, well—it might be best for your mental health to not dig too far into next week. The week high is only 24 degrees, on Monday, and Wednesday looks particularly nasty, with a “frigid” (Accuweather’s word) forecast that tops out at only 19 degrees. Or as National Weather Service-Chicago succinctly (if slightly alarmingly) put it: "Next Week EVEN COLDER." Gah!