CHICAGO’S 10 LARGEST SNOWFALLS SINCE 1886
Chicago’s 10 largest blizzards come with deep drifts of uniquely Chicago stories. A mayor voted out for mishandling stranded vehicles. A populace demanding a subway to compensate for stuck trains. Prisoners making a break from county jail. Runaway steers that escaped a crashed truck.
Now, with more than a decade passed since the 2011 blizzard dropped 21.2 inches on the city and seven years since the 2015 blizzard, here is a look back at the city’s largest snowfall events and how the Tribune covered them.
14.9 inches Jan. 6-7, 1918 9th largest
Almost 14 inches fell on the first day of the storm, which the Tribune described as “one-third the snowfall of the year 1917 and almost half that of 1915.” The newly fallen snow topped more than 4 inches already blanketing the ground.
Hundreds of vehicles stalled in drifts up to 6 feet deep, downed telephone and telegraph wires blocked communication with cities including Indianapolis and more than 300 men were enlisted to clear snow in the Loop, becoming exhausted by winds that registered 44 mph there, according to the Weather Bureau (known as the National Weather Service today).
Deliveries of food, milk and coal were impossible due to the conditions, and the city couldn’t clear the roads despite “the employment of 2,200 laborers, 631 teams and seven snow plows.” So, the call was put out for men and students dismissed from school to help with the effort.
14.8 inches Dec. 17-19, 1929 10th largest
This wasn’t the White Christmas Chicago might have been hoping for.
Frigid temperatures and nearly 40 hours of constant snowfall — including 24 hours of blizzard conditions — paralyzed the city’s means of travel by land and by air, and caused waves from Lake Michigan to lash at the shore.
At least 12 deaths in the city and suburbs were attributed to the storm, including that of Elmer Noble, 57, superintendent of the Universal Portland Cement plant in Whiting, who dropped dead outside his home at 2616 E. 74th St., while shoveling snow.
An estimated 5,000 men worked to clear ice and snow from the surface lines, which were hampered by hundreds of derailments — and caused some to suggest an underground system of rails would not suffer from the same delays due to weather.
Travelers on the roads were forced to seek refuge in farmhouses and barns on the outskirts of the city when their vehicles became marooned in ditches and drifts of snow. Thirty-five students from Warren Township High School in Gurnee bound for their homes in Fox Lake and Lake Villa were hungry and scared, awaiting rescue in a farmhouse near Sand Lake when their bus became “snowbound in a gulley nearby,” according to the Tribune.
Roughly the same number of men were forced to spend the storm inside the Adler Planetarium when high waves made the causeway between it and the mainland impassable. The nearby, newly completed Shedd Aquarium opened its doors for the first time during the storm.
An unlucky coyote, which wandered into the city seeking shelter from the storm, met its demise when a policeman responding to a woman’s call of “a mad dog” running in the street shot it.
Six prisoners saw the snow as an opportunity to burst out of the new Cook County Jail on Hubbard Street, which had no barred windows. After overpowering a guard and taking his keys, the men “battered down” a steel window sash, stepped out to a wall and jumped to their liberty.
19.2 inches March 25-26, 1930 6th largest
The ferocious storm surprised even weather forecasters who described the record-breaking March snow total as a “freak of nature, due to the fact that a low pressure area squatted over this territory instead of moving eastward as well behaved storm centers ought to do,” the Tribune reported. The Weather Bureau received an estimated 2,000 telephone calls from locals who wanted to
know how much longer the storm would last.
Ten people died as a result of the conditions, which buried streets in snow drifts, closed schools and delayed milk delivery.
Billie and Millie, polar bears at Lincoln Park Zoo, “galloped about in glee” as the snow piled up. Five animals — a springbok, two monkeys and two cockatoos — arriving at the Coliseum as part of the Sells-Floto circus, however, didn’t survive the cold.
One police officer on a motorcycle, who just happened to have experience herding cattle, stopped to round up steers fleeing a truck that crashed on its way to the Union Stockyards.
The heavy snow caused roofs around the city to cave in under the strain, including the abandoned Cafe de Champion at 39-41 W. 31st St., which had been owned by famed boxer Jack Johnson.
Downtown hotels were packed full of workers whose stays were paid for by their employers when they couldn’t make it home due to the weather. Many took in a show at one of the local theaters, which were mostly sold out for the night. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra members all showed up for their afternoon performance on March 25, 1930, at Orchestra Hall, but the audience did not.
This remained the largest snowstorm in Chicago history until it was eclipsed by a snowfall of 23 inches in 1967.
16.2 inches March 7-8, 1931 7th largest
For the third consecutive year, the Chicago area experienced a historic snow event. Unlike the previous two years, however, the city was prepared for it.
Thousands of men — some who hadn’t worked in months due to the Great Depression — began to clear snow from transit lines as soon as the first flakes began to fall.
A new device designed to prevent switches from freezing on the elevated lines helped to keep trains moving.
14.9 inches Jan. 30, 1939 8th largest
Illinois was one of 13 states impacted by this brief storm, which dumped almost 15 inches of snow here in roughly 15 hours. It was the most severe snowfall Chicago had experienced in a 24-hour period in duration and accumulation.
The intense snowfall made it difficult for both the sick and the expecting to receive medical attention. After she and her husband’s vehicle became stranded in a drift, a pregnant Mrs. Thomas Galbraith climbed into a police car to make the 5-mile journey to a hospital in Joliet.
When it could go no farther, a wrecking truck took her in. Thankfully, she was finally transferred to an ambulance and delivered a girl at the hospital.
Six-year-old Joan Andersen of Homewood was not as fortunate. Suffering from bronchial pneumonia, she desperately needed oxygen. Dr. T.H. Kelly couldn’t retrieve his car from his garage, though, since it was blocked by snow. He tried to get a taxi, but one couldn’t get near his home. When horses weren’t available, he walked 3 miles to Andersen’s home. But it was too late — she died.
On a lighter note, the snow gave some who had harbored snowshoes or skis at home the opportunity to put them to use.
And in Winnetka, William V. Hill, a purchasing agent for Montgomery Ward & Co., was lucky 15-year-old Melvin Guthrie — a Boy Scout — picked up and returned a brown envelope addressed to him that the teen found stuck in a snow bank because “inside were common stock certificates worth $3,000,” the Tribune reported.
23 inches Jan. 26-27, 1967 Chicago’s largest
Snow began falling at 5:02 a.m. on Jan. 26, 1967, and didn’t stop until a record-breaking 23 inches had accumulated the next day, according to the National Weather Service, making it the worst snowstorm recorded in Chicago history. Mountains of snow accumulated in drifts, whipped by winds of 50 mph or more.
Remarkably, the storm was preceded by unseasonable warmth — it was 65 degrees just two days before the snow appeared.
Many commuters were stuck at their workplaces on Jan. 26 as a result of the snow, staying there or at a nearby hotel for the night. Carolyn Hallman, an office supervisor, tried to take the usual 35-minute bus trip from her workplace on Wacker Drive to her home. After waiting 90 minutes to find a bus, she was standing on it for 2 hours and 40 minutes. And then, the bus stopped to help a car stuck in the snow so she walked the final five minutes to her residence.
In total, it took her more than four hours to get between work and home.
In Chicago alone, an estimated 20,000 cars and 1,100 Chicago Transit Authority buses were stranded in the snow, according to the National Weather Service. More than 2,500 people and 500 pieces of equipment would be used in the ensuing days to dig out the roads. The airports were also closed and passengers stuck inside terminals were provided pillows, blankets and hot coffee as crews outside worked to clear runways.
Students, too, were stranded at school when buses couldn’t reach them. About 650 students spent the night at four Markham area schools — settling into carpeted school libraries and atop gymnasium mats. The next day, most classes were canceled.
At least 12 babies were delivered at home, the Tribune reported, “with physicians giving instructions over the phone to snowbound mothers.”
Bread and milk were in short supply after worried customers raided shelves at grocery stores and bakeries. Camera film, too, disappeared as people rushed to capture photos of the historic snowfall.
Businesses suffered more than $150 million in losses and 60 people died — including a 10-year-old girl who was shot during a crossfire of bullets from police and looters — as a result of
the storm, according to the National Weather Service.
20.3 inches Jan. 12-14, 1979 4th largest
This was the worst storm of a winter in which almost 90 inches of snow — the all-time season record — fell on the city and was also remembered as the second-coldest in Chicago’s recorded history.
Fed up with parked and stalled cars littering the streets due to the snow, one Tribune reader wrote, “Come on, City Hall. Chicago has enough manpower and resources to get the problem cleared up.”
That letter appeared in the Tribune on Jan. 12, 1979, complaining about the city’s slow response to a New Year’s Eve storm that dumped 9 to 12 inches — before more than 20 more inches would be added during this blizzard.
Chicago was paralyzed. Buses and trains didn’t run. Schools were closed. The airports were shut down. Those at home couldn’t get to work — unless they, like one Tribune reporter, hitched a ride with a Sun-Times circulation truck — and those at work couldn’t get home — even one meteorologist at the National Weather Service who was contacted by the Tribune during his 16-hour shift.
Four fishermen whose boat was stuck in ice 1 mile off Oak Street Beach had to be rescued by U.S. Coast Guard helicopters when their boat began taking on water. Loren Drain was born in her family’s home on the North Side, thanks to help from a passerby who was a doctor.
After observing the city by helicopter, Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic ordered city snowplows to clear 250 school and Park District parking lots so residents could move their cars off the roads, but that effort was a failure. Many motorists couldn’t make it past doubleand triple-parked cars on
the still unplowed side streets. Garbage couldn’t be collected for at least 10 days. Mail was delivered late.
Instead of taking responsibility for the mishandling of the snow removal, Bilandic lashed out saying police would be ticketing vehicles and ordering them towed if not removed from Chicago’s streets. He also said there would be “no exceptions” for sick, elderly or poor people who couldn’t move their cars. “If there are hardship cases, they can tell that to a judge. That’s what a judge is for,” he told reporters. Bilandic later apologized for his mishandling of the snow removal, but Chicago residents — voters — weren’t satisfied.
21.6 inches Jan. 1-3, 1999 2nd largest
“The most devastating snowstorm to batter Chicago in two decades closed roads, canceled hundreds of flights and stranded thousands in homes, hotels and shelters across the Chicago area,” the Tribune reported on Jan. 3, 1999. Meteorologists likened the storm to the blizzard of
1979, which was also fueled by strong winds.
Mayor Richard M. Daley asked for patience as the city employed 700 pieces of heavy equipment and more than 1,400 workers on 12-hour shifts to clear the snow, which blanketed much of the upper Midwest in snow or ice. President Bill Clinton declared a snow emergency in 34 Illinois counties, including Cook County. The bill for snow-removal efforts in the first few days of the storm was an estimated $31.5 million.
Where did the snow go after it was removed from streets in the city and suburbs? Parks, vacant land and the Des Plaines River all became giant snow depositories. “There was no place else to put it,” according to Joliet’s public works director at the time.
U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, then a candidate for Chicago mayor, called a news conference to point out a South Side intersection was still clogged by snow on Jan. 4, 1999. Just 15 minutes before it was set to begin, however, a front-end loader, a snowplow, a dump truck and cars filled with city Streets and Sanitation workers arrived
to clean up the area.
“They only showed up because we had called this press conference at this particular intersection on this particular block . ... This is a part of the Daley hype,” Rush told reporters.
21.2 inches Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2011 3rd largest
Snow began falling on the city and surrounding suburbs late in the evening of Jan. 31, 2011, a Monday. The snow continued into the early morning hours of Tuesday, and then, in most areas, there was a break before the full-on blizzard hit Tuesday afternoon. Later, meteorologists would argue about how much snow actually fell during the storm, nicknamed “Snowmageddon.”
Winds, too, were fierce, gusting up to 70 mph at the lakefront, according to the National Weather Service. There were also reports of lightning, thunder and small hail.
Seven people died in the Chicago area.
Hundreds of vehicles were stranded in high snow on Lake Shore Drive during the record snowstorm. The emergency rescue process — with some Chicago firefighters using snowmobiles to reach people — was slow and the escape options limited for drivers on Lake Shore Drive, according to a city analysis. Some automobile drivers and CTA bus passengers who huddled in their respective vehicles for many hours later said they felt like they were left for dead.
As a result, the city placed movable concrete barriers on North Lake Shore Drive at Armitage Avenue and Schiller Street to create an escape route for drivers stuck there due to snow drifts, giving them the ability to turn their vehicles around at those points during threatening conditions.
19.3 inches Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2015 5th largest
Exactly four years after the 2011 snowstorm, Chicago experienced another blizzard — this one during Super Bowl weekend.
Unlike the 2011 Groundhog Day blizzard that meteorologists predicted days in advance, this storm was harder to pinpoint, said National Weather Service meteorologist David Beachler at the time.
Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015, is remembered as the snowiest February day on record in Chicago and the fourth-snowiest day in any month in the city. At one point, an inch of snow fell per hour that day.
Chicago Public Schools closed for its third weather-related closing of the year. More than 2,000 flights at O’Hare International Airport were canceled with at least another 400 canceled at Midway International Airport.
At its peak, the storm caused about 51,000 ComEd customers to lose power due to a “pretty rough combination” of high winds and heavy snow, a ComEd spokeswoman told the Tribune at the time.
About 1,200 customers of a local furniture store welcomed the snowfall because it meant their orders were free. Art Van Furniture’s weather-related promotion offered to refund buyers’ money if more than 3 inches of snow fell on Super Bowl Sunday. When more than 16 inches was recorded, Art Van returned $2.5 million to its shoppers.
The snowfall ushered in a brutal month of weather — February 2015 became the third-snowiest February on record in Chicago, with just under 27 inches of snow recorded at O’Hare. It was also tied for the coldest February on record with an average temperature of 14.6 degrees Fahrenheit.