NOAA winter outlook: What Chicago can expect this season

Kaylin's joining me now. She just got the winter outlook. It just dropped. So should we be prepared to hunker down? Grab a new jacket? Yeah. Yes, we're talking about the official NOAA National Weather Service 2026-2027 winter outlook. And I think this is going to be good news. Okay. I mean, it depends on your preference, right? So let's bring up the map and I'll explain what you're looking at. First of all, we're talking about temperatures and precipitation here. The left side of your screen is the red color over Chicago. That's the temperatures, indicating that we expect above to well above normal temperatures for meteorological winter, which includes December through February. Now, as far as precipitation goes, you can see we're kind of sandwiched in between the green and the browns in portions of northern Michigan. So precipitation-wise, near normal, the confidence in that is low-medium. Snowfall, though, below normal. So precipitation and snowfall, two different things when we're talking about the forecast. Now, if you're wondering, how does this compare to last year? Last year, we were in a La Nina pattern. This year, of course, we've been talking about this strong to very strong El Nino expected to continue. So temperatures last year were below normal slightly. And this year, of course, as you can see, we're expected to be well above normal. Snowfall last year, we had 21.9 inches. Precipitation was below normal last year. Last year we had a cold start and a mild finish, but it looks like this year potentially mild overall. So good news if you are going to be traveling, of course. Yes, the precipitation could be there, but luckily we do expect that below normal for snowfall. And you can't rule out, of course, a big winter snowstorm. This is just trends. These are climatologists looking at historical patterns. So I wouldn't rule out the chance that we could have some very impactful winter storms move through Chicagoland. But if we're talking about just the big outlook here for, again, this is meteorological winter. So this does encompass those three months of the brutal weather here. We are looking at those warmer than normal temperatures and near normal precipitation. So I don't think it's a bad thing. I think this is, I'm ready to roll into this. And from this map, you can see that we are more impacted temperature-wise than precipitation-wise from this pattern. But as far as our local forecast goes for today, if you are looking forward to hearing about that precipitation that he was just mentioning, I'll show you our local weather. We do have some scattered rain in the forecast today as well as tomorrow before that sunshine does return this weekend. Here's that look at satellite and radar showing the mostly cloudy skies and some light precipitation west of the city. I saw some light rain earlier in Central Cook County, but now Northern Will County, DuPage County, Kane County, LaSalle County, and McHenry County with that light rain. A full check of your seven-day forecast is ahead. All right, Caitlin. Thank you.