Chicagoans are probably wishing for a heat wave this winter but they might be disappointed to find out the Windy City isn’t shattering any warm weather records yet.
While it was the hottest year for Earth and the second warmest year for the U.S., the weather was just about average in Chicago in 2015.
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and NASA announced Wednesday that 2015 was the hottest year in 136 years for planet Earth thanks to El Nino and man-made global warming. Scientists said this year could surpass 2015 too.
However, Chicago wasn’t too impacted last year.
The average temperature in Chicago for 2015 was 50 degrees, close to the average of 49.9 degrees from 1981 to 2010, said Ricky Castro, meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in suburban Romeoville.
Last year, Chicago tied the coldest February on record for the city at 14.6 degrees, he said. But December was one of the mildest on record with an average of 39 degrees, making it the fourth warmest December, he said. The warmest was in 1877 when it was 43.4 degrees in December, he said.
“If not for December, the year would have finished a little below normal,” Castro said.
The warmest year for Chicago was in 2012, which was also the warmest in the U.S. The average temperature in Chicago for that year was 54.5 degrees, a year when it was so warm around St. Patrick’s Day that people wore shorts, when the summer was relentless with more than 40 days with temperatures over 90 degrees and when the mercury reached above 100 degrees for three days in a row in July, Castro said.