Last week Chicago got hammered with some of the coldest weather on record. That led to some interesting scenarios. We already wrote about how the city set tracks on fire to keep the trains moving. In this video we see Lake Michigan get turned into what looks like a boiling cauldron. Tom Skilling shared this remarkable video from a waterfront balcony and added the following:

 

To say it is brutal out there this morning is an understatement! Lake Michigan, as viewed here from Chicago’s North Side Edgewater neighborhood has taken on the appearance of a boiling cauldron as sub-20-degree below zero air makes contact with water which sits just above the freezing level. The temp at 8am is 23-below at O’Hare—record smashing reading (it has smashed a 53-year o old record set back in 1966) and the wind chill is 52-below. At Midway, it’s 21-below and the wind chill is 47 below. The coldest readings on the latest National Weather Service observation Chicago list at 8am are 24-below at West Chicago and Aurora with barbarically cold wind chills of 54 and 55-below respectively. A little perspective on how rare this is. There are 54,020 official temp readings on file for Chicago in the 148 years since 1870 and today’s 23-below at O’Hare is only the 17th temp which has dipped under 20-below! Winds are gusting to 32 mph which is creating serious blowing and drifting in open rural areas. Be exceedingly careful in this bitter cold! This is dangerous!!