'Windy City' Chicago to live up to its name today

Pre-Reading Notes: All images are in KNOTS. Click here to convert Knots to MPH.

Forecast Surface Wind Gusts

The Windy City will get a lot windier over the next several hours as a cold front will drop from Minnesota through Chicago, IL. After it does, sharp winds will batter Chicago, Milwaukee WI, Madison WI, Gary IN all at once. The image we have put above is of projected surface wind gusts (which appear very plausible to me at this point in time). Chicago is forecast to have its sustained winds at 25 MPH for 17 hours. It is possible that many areas could see widespread minor damage, such as small limbs of trees down, or possibly the occasional roof shingle. As stated before, sustained winds are expected to be in the 20's for a while. Here's the projected sustained wind speed for the same time frame as the image above.

It appears only areas close to the lakes (i.e. Chicago) will get the very windy sustained conditions. That doesn't spare the more inland areas from wind gusts up to 40 knots, which is actually 54 MPH.. It appears widespread areas of 40-45 MPH winds are possible as referenced in the first image.
We will keep you up to date on the unfolding situation, and will be back in a couple hours with the new 12z model run.