A look back to January 1979

Gino Izzi from the Chicago NWS compared the winter of January 1979 to what we've experienced so far this January.  There has been much talk of the winter of '78 and '79 due to the amount of snow we've had and the current cold we're experiencing.  Even though the weather has been pretty rough so far this winter, it doesn't quite compare (yet) to the winter of 1979.

In Rockford, there were 17 days during January where the low temperature fell below zero.  Eleven of those days had temperatures drop to -10 degrees or below and 3 days where the temperature fell to -20 degrees or below.  There have been 3 days (including this morning) where the low temperature fell below -10 degrees.  January snowfall in 1979 added up to 26.1", where we've seen only 6.1" of snow so far.

It's still early in the month, but with temperatures expected to climb back above zero Wednesday the extreme cold doesn't look to stick around.  Hopefully the rest of the month shows signs of warming up!  The 6-10 outlook from the Climate Prediction Center does indicate a possible warm up is in store within the next week and a half followed by another brief cool down.