We go to USA in this morning’s look at International weather.

As we reported a week or so ago northern America and Canada have been in a major arctic chill.  Temperatures have been close to -50 Celsius but recently things have warmed up a little.

Last night Chicago (O’Hare Airport) officially reached 0 degrees Celsius. It’s the first time in 18 days that the temperature has had a chance of reaching over zero degrees, ending a pretty remarkable stretch of subfreezing temps according to our friends at weather.com.

Chicago finally has a chance of thawing after reaching a balmy 1 degrees last night.  1 degrees doesn’t seem awfully impressive in terms of warmth but when the thermometer ticks up from zero to 1 it will be the first time the city has been above freezing since January 4.  In New Zealand we can only imagine what that must be like!

So are America and Canada over their big chill?  No – not by a long shot.  Yet another cold blast of Arctic air is on the way this weekend plunging temperatures into double minus digits.

Here in New Zealand  mostly hot, dry, weekend is on the way – gusty winds in southern regions of both islands today with rain on the West Coast.