It wasn't much, but it did the job.
After 355 days without an inch of accumulation in one day, 1.1 inch was recorded Friday morning at O'Hare International Airport, officially breaking the area's snow-less streak, according to the National Weather Service. The last storm of an inch or more occurred last February
What did fall didn't do much to change the area's snow totals. Chicago saw 12.9 inches by this time last year compared to 2.8 so far this winter. Our average is 18.3 inches.
But while it was only a dusting in most areas, it still created trouble on the roads. As of 7 a.m. 12 crashes were reported. An eight-vehicle crash was reported around 6 a.m. on the inbound Kennedy Expressway in the express lanes approaching Ogden causing only minor injuries. There was a second crash in the inbound lanes at Armitage in the express lanes as well as several other minor accidents just before the I-90/I-94 split.
Aside from the light snow, the main weather story of the week was the cold temperatures. All week Chicagoans dealt with temperatures in the 20s, teens and single digits, with wind chills well below zero.
"This is actually quite an impressive mass of cold air," Richard Castro, a meteorologist at the weather service’s office in Romeoville, said this week.
