Chicago Record High Tuesday: Wild Weather Lies Ahead For The Windy City This Week

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Following a Sunday that brought a strange mix of freezing rain and thundersnow -- OK, thundersleet -- to the Chicago area, the city hit a record high temperature Tuesday.

A high of 62 degrees was forecast for Tuesday , and the weather delivered early on its promise: Just before sunrise, at 6:50 a.m., the previous record high for the day -- 59 degrees, set in 1914 -- was already surpassed at O'Hare International Airport .

Great, right? A midwinter springtime! Break out the shorts! Not exactly. Heavy rain, possible hail and yes, more thunderstorms are also in Tuesday's forecast , according to the Chicago Tribune.

By Wednesday, temperatures in the Chicago area are again expected to plunge back into the 30s and lower thanks to a fresh round of arctic air arriving and bringing with it a chance of snow Wednesday, flurries Thursday and additional light snow by Saturday , the Chicago Weather Center reports. All told, just more than an inch of snow is expected to fall by Saturday.

Here's the somewhat baffling sight Chicagoans encountered on Weather.com's five-day forecast Monday :

Just last week, Chicago was in the grips of a bitter blast of arctic air that was the coldest the city had seen in two years .