a year
The Gulf of Mexico is very cold. The water that comes up the Mississippi to Chicago is warmer than the water in the gulf. But as you can see, there's no red on this map (which means "warm") in the gulf.
This shows where the coldest air has been in the last 24 hours. Note how much of it is right over Chicago and over the Great Lakes.
This image shows a large area of high pressure (red) centered right over Canada and extending down into North America. This means cold air will get trapped here and won't be able to go south or east.
Here's another one! You can see how it's trapping cold air right along the coast of SC, GA, NC, VA, MD, DE, and NJ. This is why it's so cold in those places too but not inland like Kentucky or Tennessee or further north like New York City . And this explains why we are still getting hit with snowstorms even though it's April (and usually by now we would have had spring weather for awhile).
But note how much more sun there is above Chicago than below it. The sun reaches farther north so when it does come out above us, we get more warmth than below us where it gets blocked by clouds that are over NYC and Philly .
We have a heat dome! Note all the red on this map which indicates very hot temperatures here (the hotter color means "very hot"). It centers around Chicago and moves down towards St Louis and Louisville , areas that haven't had any winter at all this year!
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