In 86 I was there for the coldest day in Chicago’s History. I was brutal.
God, I remember that too. 27ish below each night for most of a week. -10 high during the day I think? Something like that. Yeesh.
I moved to California the following year, no regrets
Well…I have been wondering how we’re going to get the piano up those stairs…
My wife is from New Jersey and when she had moved here for grad school her family warned her of the horrible winters … which she found were about the same as in New Jersey. No worse. No windier no colder.
Yeah we have had some doozies. A few Great Snowstorms over my lifetime. And quite a few late ones dumping on daffodils who foolishly were coaxed out by a couple of weeks of warm sun. It’s a trap! But it melts fast. A few real frigid days here and there.
Really mostly it is just winter.
One way to think of it is like Texas summer inverted. Mostly going from one climate controlled space to another and whining about it.
Now Minnesotans! They embrace it! Weez wimps by comparison.
Mrs Bdgr is from North Dakota – she’s looking forward to seasons again. Here we have heat stroke and black ice. – nothing really inbetween
Actually, Jan 20, 1985.
Another newbie to the Mitten State, taking notes. I added one of these to my list, too.
Thank you, I typed 86, but it was 85 I was there.
She’s going to fucking love it. Being young in Chicago is pretty spectacular. At least once COVID is over with, I suppose. And I suppose if you can manage to avoid becoming destitute being out of work for too long…
I own a heavy-ish down coat (nothing that would qualify as a parka) and I almost never wear it. I’m pretty thick blooded in general and have been a lifer, so a little cold doesn’t really bother me. I’m also the guy in jeans and a T-shirt on the first day that cracks 55 and in shorts when it hits 65, so grain of salt there. I generally don’t layer much either, since once indoors I want to be in a T shirt no matter the outside weather.
And while global warming has taken a lot of the staying power out of the Chicago winter deep freeze, there’s still gonna be multiple stretches in the teens (and probably more than a couple days in the single digits or worse) with wind that will make anyone from south of the Ohio River freak the fuck out. A Chicago winter has more in common with Minneapolis than it does Detroit or Cleveland.
Absolutely great advice, I do the same.
Never tried the table cloth windshield cover though sounds like a hassle tbt. Oddly enough I never seen them in use either up here. I don’t think it actually works all that great in all kinds of winter weather.
What I am excited about is using remote start this winter to heat and defrost the car while I take my time inside. Lost our covered parking when a wind from Oz Aka Chicago direction shredded the heavy duty tarp that was stretched over the driveway. Twisted the poles and uprooted the legs too. Sent it all flying into the woods behind us, for 10 years it was embedded in the gravel drive!
We aim to please! 
That’s a good one and pretty typical in my neighborhood. (Nobody would look twice at your car if you did that). I always forget to do it, though, much to my chagrin the next morning if there’s been a freezing rain or snow.
I’m finding that difficult to believe. Using Wikipedia’s climate data, here are the averages for December and January for those cities:
Minneapolis MN
Avg Hi (Dec): 27.1
Avg Lo (Dec): 12.3
Avg Hi (Jan): 23.7
Avg Lo (Dec): 7.5
Chicago IL
Avg Hi (Dec): 35.3
Avg Lo (Dec): 22.7
Avg Hi (Jan): 31.5
Avg Lo (Dec): 18.2
Detroit MI
Avg Hi (Dec): 36.1
Avg Lo (Dec): 24.1
Avg Hi (Jan): 32.0
Avg Lo (Dec): 19.1
Cleveland OH
Avg Hi (Dec): 38.3
Avg Lo (Dec): 26.4
Avg Hi (Jan): 34.4
Avg Lo (Dec): 21.7
Chicago’s pretty darn close to Detroit, though I suspect the winds are worse here. The temps are a little farther from Cleveland, but still closer than Minnesota.
I’ve discussed this w/ several folk from MN. To a person, they say the main difference betw MN and Chi is that in MN when it gets cold, it STAYS cold. I’m sure there are exceptions, but that is why Minneapolis has those little human habitrails downtown. In Chicago, you are more likely to get variable 2-3 week stretches.
Those skyways were awesome. What a brilliant idea for a downtown. There is a pretty sizable area where you could do that in Manhattan, but you were underground.
Same in Chicago, tho they seem to go out of their way to make it hard to find your way around.
Yeah, the Chicago Pedway. I grew up in Chicago and it wasn’t until late high school or possibly early college did I even realize that those were there! I only really used them when I worked at Two Prudential Plaza to find some food (there’s a number of eateries in the pedway) and I guess when I used the Metra Electric line and Millennium station.
Here’s a map of the Chicago Pedway system. There are portions that aren’t currently connected to other portions, and, as @Dinsdale notes, some sections are poorly-signed and difficult to locate.
I use portions of it in the dead of winter, in order to stay indoors for part of my walk to/from my office to Union Station.
The measured averages are going to be a little misleading here. As you noted, our wind chills will be much more impactful, but I think a bigger thing is the skew of the lake effect on the “Chicago” averages. For example, Aurora, IL was a average low temp in January of 12.6 degrees. Most of the region outside of downtown feels the winters quite a bit more than the city, though the wind downtown tends to be much tougher.