How’s the weather elsewhere?
By AMBER KROSEL -
akrosel@nwherald.com
John Koerber felt lucky that he avoided this week’s cold snap in McHenry County.
Instead of bundling up in layers, hats and gloves, he and wife Mary Ann were in Florida. The McHenry couple periodically heads south to visit friends who are accustomed to year-round warmer temperatures.
“This time of year, it’s usually around 70,” Koerber said Thursday afternoon. “Right now, it’s 57, and it’s cold for the people down here. And everybody’s shivering here, but they don’t realize [that] in Chicago, it’s 14 below.”
Illinois’ record lowest temperature was Jan. 5, 1999, in Congerville, about 25 miles southeast of Peoria. The temperature had hit 36 degrees below zero, according to the National Climatic Data Center of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
This week’s temperatures in McHenry County are bouncing along the thermometer – between lows of about 25 degrees below and highs of 25 degrees above zero. Wind-chill values today could be as low as 44 degrees below zero, the National Weather Service reported.
Koerber said that just as Chicago gets hit every year with a spell of frigid weather, it’s likely that some of that cold air will travel farther south, too.
“We know it, but the people in Florida don’t like it,” Koerber said.
As Florida-area temperatures worried residents when they got to their chilliest in the 30s and 40s, other parts of the country experienced a severe stretch of bitter cold. Many schools closed their doors Thursday across the northern region of the United States because of fears of dangerous wind chills.
Early Thursday, the Twin Cities of Minnesota reported temperatures at 20 below, with nearby areas reporting lows in the mid- to high 20s below zero. But International Falls was record-setting with a low of 40 below zero.
“People are bundling up, but it’s just part of the winter in Northwoods,” International Falls Mayor Shawn Mason said. “It helps us make those ice roads a little stiffer so we can go ice fishing. These cold snaps, while they may be inconvenient at times, are actually good for our tourism.”
But the rest of this week should bring some warmer weather to the community, as well as to local towns in McHenry County.
According to the National Climatic Data Center, the lowest recorded temperature extreme in North America was in Snag, Yukon, of Canada on Feb. 3, 1947. At 2,120 feet above sea level, it was 81.4 degrees below zero that day.
Meanwhile, the highest recorded temperature extreme in North America was in Death Valley, Calif., on July 10, 1913. The temperature was 134 degrees at 178 feet below sea level.
