Rainy days · Illinois
How often does it rain in Chicago?
Chicago’s rain blows in off the lake already annoyed, which is very on brand for Chicago.
Chicago gets measurable rain or snow on about 126 days a year, adding up to about 38 inches.
November usually brings Chicago about 10 wet days and 2.4 inches. The wettest month is usually May, with about 13 wet days, and the driest is September, with about 9 wet days. That makes Chicago number 39 of the 129 US cities we track, rainiest first.
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Rainy days, month by month
| Month | Wet days | Inches |
|---|---|---|
| January | 11 | 2.0 |
| February | 9 | 2.0 |
| March | 11 | 2.5 |
| April | 12 | 3.8 |
| May | 13 | 4.5 |
| June | 11 | 4.1 |
| July | 10 | 3.7 |
| August | 9 | 4.2 |
| September | 9 | 3.2 |
| October | 11 | 3.4 |
| November | 10 | 2.4 |
| December | 11 | 2.1 |
Cities with about as many rainy days
- Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: about 126 wet days a year
- New York, New York: about 125 wet days a year
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin: about 125 wet days a year
Source: NOAA daily precipitation records for the Chicago area, 1991 to 2020 (at least 30 complete years behind every month), via the Applied Climate Information System. A wet day here means at least a hundredth of an inch of rain or melted snow.