When Will Illinois Experience the 1st Hard Freeze of the Season?

There's a big difference between an isolated cold night and the time when the weather takes a turn into serious freezing territory. The question of when it will happen in Illinois depends heavily on where you live within the state.

My curiosity about the downturn into freezing temperatures began when I saw the National Weather Service mention that warm and dry conditions were expected to continue at least through the middle of October.

Surely, this warm trend can't last forever, right? I turned to the National Weather Service office in central Illinois who have this very helpful map showing Fall Freeze Climatology.

Traditionally, you can see that most of northern and central Illinois see the first hard freeze around the end of October while the southern part of the state won't dip that low before early to mid-November. This year might be different with warmer temperatures sticking around later in Fall than usual, but you have to figure that sooner or later Illinois will see a weather system go through that will bring the cold that stays.

When and where that happens this year remains to be seen as it's been a somewhat bizarre weather year already. Leave it to Illinois weather to be unpredictable even when it comes to cold tendencies.