25 years ago, it was minus 24 on Christmas Eve
Twenty-five years ago, Chicago-area residents needed a lot more than egg nog to stay warm during the holidays.
Dec. 25, 1983 remains the coldest Christmas Day in Chicago history, with temperatures that bottomed out at -17 degrees. That felt almost balmy, though, compared to the two days before.
On Dec. 23, the mercury dipped to -21 degrees. On Dec. 24, Christmas Eve, it plummeted to a horrific -24 degrees, the coldest temperature ever recorded in Chicago up to that point. (The record was broken roughly two years later, with a low of -27 degrees on Jan. 20, 1985.) The region endured 100 straight hours of below-zero temperatures during the 1983 stretch, a record that still stands.
These are temperatures, remember. The wind chill, driven by gusts of 30 mph to 35 mph, reached -80 degrees on Christmas Eve.
Cars refused to start. Power went out. Churches canceled their Christmas Eve services. The winds blew so much snow that some roads were declared impassable and closed. Driving was potentially deadly, given the risk of freezing in a disabled car.
Winter wonderland? Try winter wretchedness.
"I remember it well. It was awful," Vernon Hills resident Gerald Tyschper said.
Tyschper lived in Wheaton at the time. That year, his parents decided to visit for the Christmas holiday - from Phoenix.
"They just couldn't get warm," Tyschper said, laughing. "We had to crank the heat up to 75 degrees, and they still complained of being cold. We had T-shirts made for them that said something about surviving Christmas in Chicago. They were greeted as heroes when they got back to Arizona."
Paul Merzlock, a forecaster at the National Weather Service's Chicago office, said he spent that Christmas at home in the Joliet area.
"I remember going out to shovel some snow, and when I came back in I looked like Santa Claus," Merzlock said. "Ice and frost had completely covered my mustache and beard."
The cold was so intense that layers of ice formed on the inside of people's windows, he said.
"The minute you went outside, your eyes would water and then ice crystals would form in your eyelashes," he said. "When you took your first breath, it felt like the inside of your nose was freezing."
Sherry Newman of Elgin said she and her family wore multiple sweaters and even blankets around their shoulders as they ate Christmas Eve dinner.
"We lived in a drafty house back then, and it was freezing, even with the heat on full," she said. "And the wind made the scariest sound that day. I thought the house would cave in."
What made the 1983 cold even more remarkable is that the Christmas of 1982 had been the warmest on record in Chicago, with a high temperature of 64 degrees. Merzlock said he remembers people leaving their present-opening sessions on Christmas morning so they could hit the golf course.
"It almost didn't seem like Christmas, it was so warm," he said. "But then we paid for it."