NWS Storm spotter here...
I go to the source, the National Weather Service.
www.weather.gov. They're the only entity that's purely about weather and not also in the business of making money by selling advertising.
For you, Wid, I think you'd be looking at NWS Chicago :
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/Specifically, read the "forecast discussion" for your town. Click on the map or put in your town/zipcode, then look on the bottom right of the page. This is a write-up produced by the meteorologists at your local office. It gives an inside look at what the meteorologists are thinking, often discussing aspects of the forecast that they don't mention in the broad forecast. I find it very useful and interesting. "Tomorrow it'll be sunny & 20" vs. "Tomorrow, we might see scattered snow flurries in the morning, but they should move out of the forecast area by mid-day and lead to sunny skies. Temps will range from the upper teens in the west to lower twenties in the east."
The "hourly weather graphs" are very helpful in knowing when precip will start/end, etc.
Otherwise, I like
www.wunderground.com. Mostly because I have a home weather station, and I upload data to wunderground, so I don't see any ads. I use it to check on the weather at my house at any time, from anywhere. Wunderground's forecasts are ok, but their "wundermap" display is awesome and definitely superior to the NWS. Lots of neat overlays; storm direction, intensity, precip, stations, etc. Invaluable during storm-chasing season.
