Yeah, northern third. If you bisect the state vertically down the middle, then slice the vertical area by thirds. Ottawa is about 10 miles east of the point where the center vertical crosses the top third slice. I'm about 90 miles from Chicago. I've got relatives around the center of Illinois on the Indiana border, and they hardly get snow at all, and it never gets as cold as it does here. Illinois is a lot bigger of a state than most people realize. If you line up Illinois directly over Texas, but keep it on the same latitute - the distance from the southern point of Illinois to the Texas panhandle is a difference of less than 50 miles. In a way Illinois is both a northern and a southern state... (residents in southern Illinois sound like they are from Kentucky, by their accent.)