Finally this evening we've got some noticeably strong N winds with light rain. Certainly has autumn feel in the air. Winter has managed to dance around us, lol.

Keeping the map above in mind, let's do a throwback to another storm that actually hit on the same day in 2015. The 2015 storm was a much bigger snowstorm in the big picture, so there's no comparison in terms of amounts, but I wanted to draw attention to the differences in the distribution of snowfall in the Chicago metro area. The contoured map doesn't properly capture the snowfall gradient that occurred across the city of Chicago, but the second map does. As you can see, there was literally only around an inch in and around downtown Chicago. Fall 2015 was a mild Fall, not unlike this year. And off the top of my head, lake temperatures on 11/21/2015 were similar to lake temperatures yesterday. But here's the key difference. The 2015 system tracked through central IL/IN, which is typically a good track for Chicago, but that track meant that the winds were onshore off of the relatively mild lake. With yesterday's system dropping in from the north, it kept the winds around Chicago largely out of the west until late in the game. The point of all this is that it is possible to get a decent early season snow even in the core of Chicago (also happened on Halloween 2019), it's just that the deck is going to be stacked in most setups with onshore flow unless the airmass aloft is extremely cold for the time of year. But any setup with offshore winds is fair game.

Something you don't see every day out EAST in November nonetheless

If I’m not freaking out no one should be.

Someone has grown a palm tree in my neighborhood. Haven't checked it since the January blast since my neighborhood has 4000 people and I only go there around Christmas for my lights tour.