DOWNTOWN — If you thought this March was particularly gloomy, you're right: It was rainier and cloudier than usual, plus we got stuck with a snowstorm.
Daylight hours are sunny just 49 percent of the time on average in March, said Frank Wachowski, a retired meteorologist who tracks sunlight. Yet this March there was a 9 percent drop, meaning it was sunny just 40 percent of the time.
On top of that, the city had 50 percent more precipitation than usual, with 3.99 inches falling, said AccuWeather meteorologist Paul Walker. Chicago normally gets around 2.5 inches for the month. There wasn't a ton of snow, he noted, but there was a lot of rain and fog.
"I think people might notice that," Walker said, laughing.
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And while the city typically gets 5.5 inches of snow throughout March, Walker said, it got around 7.8 inches from snowstorms over two days this year. The snowfall broke the record at Midway.
The upside is it was 1.7 degrees warmer than normal, Walker said. The city even broke a 78-year-old record when it hit 82 degrees on March 24.
This January was also gloomy: It saw less than a week's worth of sunny weather. It was the second-cloudiest in more than 30 years of record-keeping, Wachowski said.
