In December, this magazine’s cover story was “Why We Love Winter: 39 Ways to Get the Most Out of the Season.” We recommended cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, swimming in the icy lake, ice skating, and running on an empty lakefront. And yet, on Tuesday, the 27th of February, the lakefront was crowded with runners in t-shirts and shorts. The ice rink in Millennium Park was melting. Except for a brief polar vortex in mid-January, winter just hasn’t shown up this year. Are we down to just three seasons now: spring, summer, and chilly gloom?

February 2024 was the warmest February in the history of Chicago, with an average temperature of 39.2 degrees — .2 degrees higher than February of 1882. We’ve had 7 inches of snow all year — hardly enough for skiing and snowshoeing. It’s a big cheat. In the Midwest, we expect the royal flush of seasons. We live here instead of San Diego because 72 degrees and sunny every day of the year is nothing to brag about enduring. It’s hard to imagine a duller average temperature than 39.2 degrees: too cold for summer sports and too warm for winter sports.

Our warm February is a local iteration of an international occurrence. This is also the warmest February in the history of the world. According to Reuters, “spring-like conditions caused flowers to bloom early from Japan to Mexico, left ski slopes bald of snow in Europe and pushed temperatures to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Texas…thanks to climate change and the warming in the Eastern Pacific Ocean known as El Nino. If confirmed, that would be the ninth consecutive monthly temperature record to be broken.”

It’s due to a phenomenon that climatologists call the “winter squeeze,” which is a result of the fact that, as the climate changes, winters are warming twice as fast as summers. That’s because winters are more susceptible to heat trapping gasses: carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor.

“Cold atmospheres are especially sensitive to the additional moisture because the air is usually dry to start with, and a little more water vapor means a lot more heat is trapped near the surface,” Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, told Vox.

On Tuesday evening, monsoon rains poured down on the city. By Wednesday morning, we were back in traditional winter gear: parkas, scarves, and wool beanies. No one enjoyed this whipsawing weather more than Tom Skilling, who delivered his final WGN weather forecast on the same day the temperature dropped 46 degrees. Skilling is said to be the highest-paid weatherman in the country. He’s indisputably the most popular personality in local news. That’s because Chicago is a serious weather town, a town that can experience multiple climatic seasons in a single week. A brewery named a beer after Skilling. A butcher shop named a sandwich after him. The final word from Skilling was that winter had only returned for a day or two. The squeeze is still on. March, which normally drags out winter interminably, will come in like a lamb.

“It was chilly today,” Skilling reported. “The big storm system that produced last night’s weather is wild up here east of James Bay. And on his backside, these northwest winds that have been ported the cold air is pretty evident right there. See this little dip in the isotherms here and that’s the cold air punch coming in here. It’s part of a reservoir of very chilly air. And we for a day or two are bringing that back in. But as has happened all winter long, we’re going to kick it out of here pretty expeditiously and by the time we get to the end of the week, we’ll be in the 50s Friday, the 60s Saturday, and probably back in the 70s again on Sunday, which is quite an achievement at this time of the year.”

It’s Tom Skilling’s weather. The rest of us just dress for it. The man is bigger than his subject. Tom Skilling didn’t become famous because of the weather; the weather became famous because of Tom Skilling. Even Bill Murray said so, when the two Chicago legends met at Navy Pier last month: “I don’t think we’re going to have weather anymore” after Skilling retires. “I don’t see the point. I don’t see the point of looking out the window anymore.” 

We’ll still have weather, even without Tom Skilling, but it looks like we won’t have winter to kick us around anymore.