Here in Illinois, especially Northern Illinois, there are a few things about winter that don't change no matter how heavy or light the snowfall is during the course of the season:

  • You'll need a snow shovel
  • You'll need an ice-scraper
  • You'll need to use both of them
  • At some point, we'll get all upset/excited/confused about a polar vortex

What does change is the amount of time you'll end up spending with your snow shovel and ice scraper over a winter. Some years we get frequent and heavy snowfalls, some years it's infrequent and less heavy, but either way, no one in Northern Illinois makes it from October through April without doing at least some shoveling and scraping...and this coming winter will be no exception, according to winter weather experts.

Thick snowfall in march
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For Northern Illinois People Of A Certain Age, The Winter Of 1978-79 Is The Snow-Filled Winter Wonderland That We Remember Most

The winter of 78-79 saw 74.5 inches of snow dropped on the stateline, with the snow reaching a depth of 27 inches in January of 1979. Those of us old enough will probably recall shoveling driveways and sidewalks--then heading up to do the roof. After my dad made me do our house, the neighbors thought I did such a good job that he sent me over to do their houses, too. And so on, and so on...

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Not me, but I can see the resemblance. (Getty Images)
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For a 16 year old kid, making over $1,500 shoveling driveways and roofs was a great gift that went toward buying my first car.

For better or for worse, we just don't seem to have those kinds of massive snowfalls in Northern Illinois anymore, when you consider that Rockford has averaged 36.7 inches of snow per season for the last 30 years. That number is 14.3 inches above the national average, 22.4 inches.

fresh snow pile on black charcoal grill
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A Well-Respected Weather Company Is Out With Their Winter Weather Predictions For The Nation, And It Looks Like It Could Be An Interesting Season In Northern Illinois

AccuWeather.com's winter forecast for the 2025-2025 season has a good news-bad news scenario for the northern part of our state that I think many people are going to be pretty okay with.

The good news is that AccuWeather says that temperatures this winter in Northern Illinois will trend toward being warmer than normal. Warmer temperatures over the course of the winter season should result in less heating demand in Northern Illinois, and with less demand comes smaller heating bills.

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The Good News Is Warmer Winter Temperatures, The Bad News Is...More Snowfall

My wife, a hardcore lover of snow, will say that both warmer temperatures and more snowfall are good things, so I guess it all depends on how you feel about snow.

How much more snow than normal are we looking at in Northern Illinois?

According to the AccuWeather.com winter forecast, Northern Illinois can expect to see anywhere from 36 to 45 inches of snow during the course of the winter season (last winter the number was around 22 inches).

How does that compare to the average yearly snowfall totals for the Northern Illinois region?

From 1990 through 2020, we averaged out at 38.4 inches per winter.

LOOK: The most extreme temperatures in the history of every state

Stacker consulted 2021 data from the NOAA's State Climate Extremes Committee (SCEC) to illustrate the hottest and coldest temperatures ever recorded in each state. Each slide also reveals the all-time highest 24-hour precipitation record and all-time highest 24-hour snowfall.

Keep reading to find out individual state records in alphabetical order.

Gallery Credit: Anuradha Varanasi

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