Chicago got hit with a nasty winter storm over the weekend of January 25 and 26, and the aftermath was just as brutal as the snow itself. Most areas around the city saw somewhere between four and six inches of snow, with O’Hare Airport recording 4.4 inches by the time everything was done.
The snow started falling early on January 25 and kept coming throughout the day. Roads got slippery fast since the cold we’d been dealing with meant nothing was melting. Even worse, the snow piled up on surfaces that were already icy from previous cold snaps, making driving a mess. The Illinois State Police were dealing with crashes all over the highways, and getting anywhere took way longer than usual.
But honestly, the real problem wasn’t even the snow. What came next was even worse. Early on January 26, wind chills plunged to between minus 20 and minus 25 degrees, prompting the National Weather Service to issue Cold Weather Advisories across the entire Chicago area. Stepping outside felt brutal—like your face could freeze in just minutes. Even the day before, on January 25, temperatures struggled to climb out of the teens, roughly 25 degrees colder than what’s typical for late January.
The storm messed up travel plans for a lot of people. Thousands of flights got canceled at O’Hare and Midway over the weekend. If you were trying to fly anywhere or had friends or family coming into town, chances are those plans got completely thrown off.
For those of us at Illinois Institute of Technology, this kind of weather is a good reminder that Chicago winters are no joke. You can’t just run outside in a hoodie to get to class. Frostbite can happen in minutes when it’s this cold, and hypothermia is a real risk if you’re outside too long. Layering up isn’t optional, it’s necessary. And if you can avoid being outside for extended periods, that’s probably the move.
Some people on the North Side lost power during the storm. Around 1,500 customers were affected, though the outages got fixed pretty quickly. We were lucky compared to states farther south where hundreds of thousands of people were stuck without electricity because of ice taking down power lines and trees.
Weather forecasters are saying the cold isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. There are at least two more Arctic blasts coming this week, so anyone commuting to campus or heading downtown should keep checking the forecast and plan extra time for travel.