Arctic air arrived overnight in the Chicago area, with wind chills expected to make temperatures feel as low as -40 degrees by daybreak Friday and an extreme cold warning in effect for all of northeastern Illinois.
As of 5 a.m., temperatures across the area were all below zero and dropping. NBC 5 Storm Team Meteorologist Alicia Roman said. Winds were expected to gust as high as 30 mph as the morning continued.
“It’s a very blustery, frigid morning” Roman said. “The only thing we have going for us, is we may have a little sunshine today.”
How cold will it get?
Wind chills early Friday morning were between -20 and -30 degrees, Roman said, especially in areas to the north and west, including Woodstock, Rockford, Waukegan, Aurora and DuPage. As the sun rises, the cold will become even more extreme.
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The coldest point of the day, Roman said, with wind chills anywhere from -35 degrees to -40 degrees will occur between 7 and 8 a.m. Such temperatures could lead to frostbite in as little as 10 minutes.
“It’s going to be more kind of reddish fingers, maybe toes, that burning sensation,” Dr. Scott Henrich of Rush University Medical Center said, of what frostbite looks like. “You might feel a little bit of pain. As it progresses more to frostbite, you can get kind of some color changes, you may get some tingling, then you may lose sensation in there and get some blistering as well.”
Henrich added that frostbite can happen “pretty quickly” in the temperature the Chicago area is seeing.
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“You can start off feeling kind of shivering, feeling really cold. And as it progresses, you can actually start getting some changes in your mental status. Maybe some confusion, or just acting not normally,” he said.
The brutal conditions also forced Metra to reduce service and led to more than 100 schools in Illinois, including Chicago Public Schools, to announce closures or moves to e-learning Friday. You can find a full list of schools closed Friday here.
Dozens of libraries would also be closed, the Emergency Closing Center reported. Some popular Chicago-area museums also announced closures due to the cold, including the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium and the Shedd Aquarium.
How long will the cold last?
Things won’t improve much as the day goes on.
When the extreme cold warning ends, a cold weather advisory will go into effect for the area, lasting from 12 p.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
“Later today, our high temperature, right at zero,” Roman said. “That’s it for this afternoon.”
Saturday’s high temperature, Roman said, was 10 degrees. Morning wind chills Saturday would still be bitter, between -15 and -25 degrees.
Will a major winter storm hit Illinois?
As the Chicago area sees brutal temperatures, a “high impact and far-reaching” winter storm was setting up across the Tennessee Valley, with millions of people bracing heavy snow and crippling ice, according to the NWS Weather Prediction Center.
The storm, moving from west to east, could crush trees and power lines and knock out power for days. Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston could see enough snow to make travel very difficult or nearly impossible, forecasters say.
“The set up is there for major travel disruptions, record snowfall and significant ice accumulations to knock out power… I don’t say this lightly,” NBC 5 Storm Team Meteorologist Kevin Jeanes said.
Snow from the storm was expected to hit southern and central Illinois Saturday night. The Chicago area will be on the “far northern edge” of the system, with snow possible Sunday.
“Higher snowfall totals possible in our southern counties,” Roman said, where between two and five inches of snow could fall.
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