Northern Illinois Posted Some Stunningly Low Temps On Wednesday

I don't know about you, but Thursday's temperature of 33 degrees in Rockford made it feel to me like we'd hit the first day of Spring. Especially since many of us were shocked by the crazy cold temperatures we got on Wednesday.

Rockford didn't break its all-time record for cold that was set in January of 2019 at -31 degrees Fahrenheit, but we were definitely in the ballpark. Below, you'll see what a thermometer in Rochelle looked like Wednesday morning.

Wednesday's Winds Were Pretty Calm Here In Rockford, But For Other Cities And Towns In Northern Illinois--Not So Much

Being Midwesterners, we're fond of noting how much worse/better the cold temperatures would be if it weren't for the wind, or lack of it. Rockford's low on Wednesday of -18 degrees would have been so much worse if we'd had some serious wind to go along with it. Throughout the morning, we were lucky to just deal with the straight cold temperatures.

Wednesday's Lowest Temperature, And Nearly Lowest Wind Chill In Northern Illinois Happened Just South Of Rockford

That would be in the aforementioned city of Rochelle, where the mercury dipped all the way to 23 degrees below zero. The National Weather Service recorded Rochelle's Wednesday morning wind chill numbers at -40 degrees.

Rochelle almost won (if you can call it that) both categories, but Aurora Airport was one degree colder with wind chill at -41, and one degree warmer in actual temperature at -22 degrees.

It Was Almost Balmy At O'Hare And Midway Airports When Compared To The Rockford Airport

Chicago's O'Hare airport recorded a low temperature of 6 degrees below zero, and Midway bottomed out at 5 below zero. In Dekalb, the mercury dipped down to -18 degrees, but the wind chill was 32 degrees below zero. Good thing NIU's mascot is a Huskie (before accusing me of a misspelling, that's how NIU chooses to spell it. So there.)