New Year’s Day in Chicago: The warmest, coldest, snowiest and wettest weather since 1872

The first days of 2024 and 2023 were an ideal start if your resolution was to get in more steps or to walk the dog more often. The high temperature reached 45 degrees both days and were major contrasts to 2022.

That’s when Chicago got off to a snowy start, with slightly more than 3 inches observed at O’Hare International Airport, the city’s official reporting site.

Ironically, the season’s first snowfall arrived just a few days earlier — on Dec. 28, 2021 — making it the latest date of a first snowfall in Chicago history going back to 1885, and just the 26th time in the past 136 years that the city had to wait until the final month of the year to experience snow on the ground.

[ Here’s when Chicago received its first snow of the fall season, going back more than 135 years ]

Here’s a look at the warmest, coldest, wettest and snowiest New Year’s Day holidays in Chicago, going back to 1872.

Data is from the National Weather Service’s Chicago office and measured at O’Hare, which has been the city’s official recording site since Jan. 17, 1980. For almost a century prior to that, sites around downtown Chicago, the University of Chicago and Midway International Airport were used to gather definitive weather data.

Warmest

“The morning was so warm that overcoats, mufflers and furs were almost entirely discarded, and in some of the up-town dwellings ladies received callers with open parlor-windows, something that has hitherto been unknown in Chicago.”

—  Chicago Tribune, Jan. 2, 1876

Chicago experienced its warmest Jan. 1 in 1876 — “balmy as in May” the next day’s Chicago Tribune called it — when the high temperature reached 65 degrees. “Chicago cannot remember when New Year’s Day dawned under such favorable auspices for calling,” the Jan. 2, 1876, story proclaimed. A late afternoon rainstorm with fierce winds, however, sent some residents to the lakefront to retrieve flags that adorned their homes: “Some enthusiastic patriots who neglected to haul down their Star-Spangled banners before the storm came will have to look for them in Lake Michigan to-day.”

The normal high for New Year’s Day in Chicago is 32 degrees, according to the National Weather Service, which also happens to be in the most frequent high temperature range for the day — the 30s.

The coldest high temperature on New Year’s Day was in 2018, when the high reached just 1 degree.

In 2024, the high was 45 degrees.

Coldest

Chicago experienced its lowest New Year’s Day temperature in 1969, when at 5:15 a.m. -10 degrees was recorded at Midway, which was then the city’s official weather recording site. A story in the Jan. 2, 1969, edition of the Tribune reported 130 calls per hour flowed into the mayor’s office of inquiry and information complaining of insufficient heat.

The normal low temperature on New Year’s Day in Chicago is 17 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

In 2024, the low was 37 degrees.

Wettest

“A low pressure atmospheric area, the same that accompanied the tornado that swept thru Louisiana and Arkansas Wednesday, had brought 0.62 of an inch of rain by noon.”

—  Chicago Tribune, Jan. 2, 1948

New Year’s Day has been mostly dry or resulted in just a trace of rain recorded for 100 of the previous 149 years.

Rain accumulating in more than 1 inch of precipitation has occurred just twice since 1872, according to the National Weather Service. In 1948, rain that later turned into a blizzard and ice storm dropped 1.33 inches of precipitation on Chicago — the most rain recorded on Jan. 1.

In 2024, 0.16 inches of rain fell.

Snowiest

“Every track sweeper available was employed by the surface and elevated lines throughout the day, and it was only through the exertion of the greatest efforts that the tracks were kept clear and the traffic moving.”

—  Chicago Tribune, Jan. 2, 1918

Since 1872, snowfall of an inch or more has been recorded just 12 times on Jan. 1.

No snow was observed in 2023, but slightly more than 3 inches of snow was reported on New Year’s Day in 2022.

[ Chicago’s 10 largest snowfalls since 1886 — and how the Tribune covered them ]

It was just the sixth time since 1872, that Chicago received more than 3 inches of snow on the first day of the year.

A record snowfall of 5 inches fell in 1918, delaying much-needed coal trains from arriving in the city during a coal shortage.

Sources: National Weather Service Chicago; Tribune archives and reporting

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