Coldest Oct. 4 since the Cubs won 100 games, record books say

How cold was Saturday?

So cold that the last time Chicago was this chilly on the fourth of October, the Cubs were in the World Series.

Saturday’s 47 degree high is the coldest ever recorded for the date — narrowly beating the previous coldest high of 48, recorded all the way back in 1935, when the Cubs won the National League pennant.

And the short flurry of snow that fell Saturday morning was the third earliest snowfall of the season since weather record keeping began in 1881, according to the National Weather Service. The earlier dates were September 25, 1928 and September 25, 1942.

Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Romeoville spent Saturday running the numbers to determine these very specific records, said Meteorologist Eric Lenning.

But record keeping decades ago was much different, and it caused extra work on Saturday for the beloved weather geeks.

“Those records are all trace events and the funny thing is a trace of snow may also have been hail at this time of year and we had to look at the temperature … and rule out the ones that would obviously not be snow,” Lenning said.

A search back to 1935 also showed that on Oct. 4, the Cubs played Game 3 of the World Series against the Detroit Tigers at Wrigley Field.

They lost the game and, it comes as no shock, the World Series, too.

And that season was the last time the Cubs won 100 games.