Global warming: Chicago sets back-to-back low temperature records

Des Plaines River yesterday

near Chicago

"The earth has a fever," Al Gore once said.

Then why is it so cold?

From NBC Chicago:

The Chicago area saw plenty of snow to start the week - but that was just the beginning of the winter weather, as a record-breaking cold snap descended on the area Tuesday.

After a snowstorm dropped several inches of snow on some locations, frigid temperatures came in the overnight hours, cold enough to break two single-day records in two days. Temperatures dropped into the low teens, with some areas seeing the mercury fall into single digits.

The first of the two back-to-back records broken came Monday night, when the temperature dropped to 13 degrees at O'Hare Airport before midnight. That beats the previous low temperature of 15 degrees recorded in that same location back in 1950.

Then, the temperature at O'Hare in the early morning hours reached just 7 degrees, marking a new single-day record low for the city. The record low temperature for Chicago on Nov. 12 was previously 8 degrees above zero, set in 1986.