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Yeah, I know how cold it got because I was literally there filming the event in real time. Only -20F in the downtown area, which is not even that impressive for a once-in-a-lifetime event, but people just like to complain.
Also, 85 is the average July max in Chicago, with 300 sun hours. Again, people like to pretend that they live in the Arctic, after a few weeks of drizzly weather.
That little bit of drizzly weather broke our all-time rainfall record last month; a record set just last year.
Your assessment is as inaccurate as the NWS forecasting.
To be fair, we should compare things from the exact same period I think.
On the first page, the table uses the most recent 1981-2010 period for Chicago, and an older one, 1971-2000, for Marseille...
I discarded (on my screenshot) the mean maximums line and the mean minimums line from the original Chicago's table, because this type of data doesn't appear on the Marseille's table...
And to be even fairer, I used the International Airport station's data for both cities...
Now, we could also possibly say things like that:
People who prefer frequent heavy snowfalls and frequent deep cold in winter would prefer Chicago;
People who prefer frequent muggy heat in summer would prefer Chicago;
People who prefer frequent Mistral wind and sunny days would prefer Marseille;
People who prefer subtropical Mediterranean evergreen vegetation would prefer Marseille;
etc.
All in all, Chicago seems better for people who like being challenged by the weather and the climate, ie not for the squeamish if I may say...
That said, Marseille is just barely, barely sunnier than Chicago! Meaning Chicago is doing well on that thing, too!
And that said, we can find places with even milder weather throughout an average year than Marseille, too, to be compared with Chicago!
^It certainly has (it occurs on ~1-2 nights per year on average), but regardless of that my point was simply that the guy's post was quite clearly nonsense.
(Honestly though, wind chills are as silly as heat indices and humidexes, and none of these quantities should be compared to actual temperature readings of the same value. Better just to keep track of wind speed and temperature and interpret them as separate quantities.)
^It certainly has (it occurs on ~1-2 nights per year on average), but regardless of that my point was simply that the guy's post was quite clearly nonsense.
(Honestly though, wind chills are as silly as heat indices and humidexes, and none of these quantities should be compared to actual temperature readings of the same value. Better just to keep track of wind speed and temperature and interpret them as separate quantities.)
To be precise, the official reading in my town 30 miles NW of Chicago was -29F.
And if you don't consider heat index part of the equation, go spend the summer in Florida; cutting grass.
You'll change your mind in a hurry.
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