Baby, it’s cold outside.
By Tuesday afternoon, the temperature had risen to 2 degrees, which happened to be the high for the day.
Tuesday made Monday, with its high of 13 degrees, look mild. And Wednesday, with temps in the mid-20s, seemed almost balmy. Of course it wasn’t a good idea to look at wind chills at all this week. (Although we’re not sure if we can really discern much difference between 2 and -28 while we’re rushing from our car to the office.)
Eleven years ago we suffered a bitterly cold January, with one stretch of temperatures below zero for 37 hours straight. That was the first time we’d heard of the “polar vortex.” The term appeared on our pages again in 2015 and 2019. But we haven’t seen it since.
We know the weather this week hasn’t been as severe as it was in 2014. We had below zero temps for a mere 11 hours overnight Monday to Tuesday, when most of us were snug in our beds.
And maybe we’ve gotten tougher over the past decade. Schools were closed Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but they opened Tuesday despite the frigid temperatures. Parks and rec programs went on as scheduled and the Hinsdale Public Library was open. Brookfield Zoo and Fullersburg Woods Education Center — along with businesses in town — all closed in 2014 but remained open this year.
That left lots of folks out working in the cold, including Marion Short, the letter carrier for downtown Hinsdale.
“It’s the coldest man in Hinsdale!” Jim said when Marion walked in Tuesday. He might be right.
But a host of people were out in the cold, from school crossing guards and police officers to dog walkers and delivery drivers. We thank them all.
Things could be worse, of course. While some flurries fell yesterday, O’Hare International Airport has received less than 4 inches of snow this month, far below the average of 11.3 inches we typically get.
And we really can’t complain. The arctic blast is affecting temperatures across the country, with highs some 30 degrees below normal across the eastern two-thirds of the country. Winter Storm Enzo hit the Gulf Coast Tuesday, giving residents in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and north Florida a taste of our winter weather. Portions of Texas and Louisiana experienced their first-ever blizzard warning. New Orleans saw some 9 inches of snow, the most the city has seen in more than 140 years of weather records. Places like Orange Beach in Alabama — typically covered in tourists — were blanketed in the white fluffy stuff.
Plus we all love talking about the weather, right? Where were you during the snowstorm of 1967? (If you weren’t born yet, please keep that to yourself.) Or the Blizzaster of 2011, when 20 inches of snow fell in less than a day?
Perhaps we need to call in Dr. Rick, Progressive Insurance’s consultant, to save us from becoming our weather-obsessed parents.
