The Daily Parker

We got 220 mm (8.6 in) of snow at O'Hare by 6am today, which means the storm dumped more on us than on any November day in history (earlier reported as the worst in almost 10 years):

As of 6 p.m., 6.9 inches (175 mm) of snow had fallen at O’Hare and 5.5 (140 mm) at Midway, making it the heaviest single-day snowfall since Nov. 21 2015, when 7 inches fell at O’Hare, according to the National Weather Service.

O’Hare had been predicting its busiest Thanksgiving week ever, despite the FAA recently lifting flight restrictions across the country during the country’s longest government shutdown. More than 1.63 million travelers were expected to pass through O’Hare during the seven-day Thanksgiving period through Monday.

Sunday is expected to be the peak travel day at O’Hare, with up to 290,000 passengers arriving. The snow is expected to fall through Sunday morning, snarling travel for those returning home from Thanksgiving. Another snow system could move in Monday night.

The Chicago area could see up to 10 inches (254 mm) of snow by the time the storms move out of the area, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kevin Donofrio.

Also according to the National Weather Service, "This was the greatest storm total snowfall since 10.8" (275 mm) fell from January 30-31, 2021."

Another round of snowfall is due tomorrow evening. I guess I won't be dining alfresco on my patio tonight:

And after running (or porpoising) through snow that comes up to her chest for an hour yesterday, Cassie had a relaxing evening:

It's nice when you can plan for severe weather.

It's snowed nearly all day, lightly at first but turning a lot worse after noon. Since the temperature has stayed right around -1°C it wasn't a problem to give Cassie some off-leash time at the local park:

She even made new friends:

And you'd think after 9 hours of snowfall, my rain gauge might have registered some precipitation. I wonder what the trouble could be?

As of noon we had 76 mm of snow officially at O'Hare. I expect it'll be more than double that when the 6pm report comes out. About an hour after that, my big pot of beef stew will be ready. And the forecast predicts the snowfall should start to taper off after 2am and skies should clear up by tomorrow night.

Hey, it's the last two days of autumn. We were due.

Cassie and I hauled out to Far Suburbistan and met friends (one dog, one human) for a 4.7-km walk around the St James Farm Forest Preserve:

Because I wanted to get groceries ahead of tomorrow's snowfall, poor Cassie had to suffer in the car for about 3 hours. Don't feel bad: my friend had tons of leftovers from yesterday, so Cassie got enough turkey to last her until dinner next Thursday. She's now plotzed on the couch.

She doesn't know it yet, but we're about to go for another walk. My 77-day streak of 10,000+ steps may come to an end tomorrow, but I'm not going to give up my 7-year streak of 70,000+ steps per week.

Cassie and I have gotten a couple of decent walks today, with a very long walk planned for tomorrow, because this is on the menu for late tomorrow night:

The National Weather Service predicts a 70% chance of us getting 150 mm (6 in) of snow or more. Whee.

Cassie will enjoy it, though.

Russia expert (and emigrée) Julia Ioffe picks apart the OAFPOTUS's clownish attempts to end the war in Ukraine one more time:

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. President Donald Trump, eager to get another peace deal under his belt, sends everyone in Washington, Kyiv, Moscow, and Brussels scrambling as he announces that an agreement to end the Ukraine war is imminent. The proposal, on even the most cursory examination, is revealed to echo the Russian position, at which point Volodymyr Zelensky and the Europeans start an all-out offensive to pull the American president over to their side. The text is amended to reflect some of what Ukraine needs and wants in a settlement. This then renders it unacceptable to Vladimir Putin, and puts the peace deal Trump promised to deliver within 24 hours of taking office, 10 months ago, back out of reach.

The first time we witnessed this sequence was in February, soon after Trump’s inauguration. Then in the spring. Then again in August, in Anchorage, just ahead of the Labor Day holiday. Now, with a day to go before Thanksgiving, we’re somewhere around 80 percent through the script, though it’s pretty clear how it’ll end. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said as much on Tuesday: Given how much the plan has changed, Moscow is likely no longer on board.

In Washington—at least among the bipartisan crowd that, like most Americans, still backs Ukraine—people are alarmed. ... In Moscow, this latest round of chaos was greeted with wincing skepticism: They’ve been down this road before.

The absolute, best-case, pie-in-the-sky scenario, [a] source close to the Kremlin said, would be a peace deal by spring, following months of intense, round-the-clock work. Right now, though, that work isn’t happening. “The way it’s organized now, I don’t see a chance,” the source said. “It’s all very poorly organized. But it is what it is. It’s better than nothing.”

This is what happens when you don't believe expertise has value, and you send a real-estate developer to attempt diplomacy with one of the wiliest and slipperiest regimes on Earth.

Dan Rather piles on:

Less than a year into the second Trump term, the long view of American foreign policy, if you can even call it by such sober terminology , is a confusing jumble of transactional moves with no through line.

It’s guided by the whims du jour of our allegedly “America First” president. Even if you don’t agree with his isolationist stance, it is a definable policy, but one that he seems to have abandoned on a whim.

This president – aided by his business cronies with no diplomatic or foreign policy experience – has systematically put this country in the precarious position of being less safe than it was on Inauguration Day.

We still have more than three years to go. At least we have the possibility of electing a sane legislative branch next November.

Not a whole lot going on today. Early departure from work, four days off, lots of couch time and walkies with Cassie, and oh my god what is that thing heading towards us:

Yeah, looks like we might get some snow on Saturday. But since we know that on Tuesday, we'll adapt.

Also, the A-Ring A-Hole is a dork.

So in case I don't have a chance to read all of these tonight:

• Did the White House staff put up tacky, gold-colored, signage outside the Oval Office because the OAFPOTUS is a classless tool, or because he's well along the dementia highway?
• Dan Rather puts the blame for declining educational outcomes in the US squarely on the party who has attacked public education for 40 or 50 years now.
• DOGE has officially ended, having accomplished absolutely nothing good, and of course it'll be up to my party to repair all the damage.
• The bottle of hairspray in the Pentagon's A-Ring wants the Defense Department to cut ties with Scouting America, accusing them of attacking "boy-friendly spaces" because they let girls in now. (Seriously. I am not making this up.)
• The DoD is also threatening US Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a retired US Navy captain and former commander of the Space Shuttle, for telling troops not to follow illegal orders. (Kelly noted that he merely repeated the relevant section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which, of course, the Defense Secretary has probably never read. Also note that, under Article I, section 6 of the Constitution, sitting legislators can't be prosecuted for anything they say in pursuance of their elected duties.)
• The Attorney General of Alaska would like you to know he's tired of progressives in California making it hard for his state to despoil the wilderness.
• Matthew Yglesias has "been covering Larry Summers controversies" for most of his life, and he's pretty tired of it.
• After reading about her a bit, I have concluded that journalist Olivia Nuzzi probably has a cluster-B personality disorder, which Melody Schreiber does not see as an excuse for her elevating the most dangerous quack ever to grace the halls of the Dept of Health and Human Services.
• Bruce Schneier found four examples of "AI...being used to strengthen democracies worldwide," which is heartening.
• Charles Marohn also sees some good coming out of our "Gutenberg moment" where new technologies are exposing corruption and allowing new movements to gain traction.

Well, that seems to be enough for now.

I'm a bit under the weather but still have to get to rehearsal tonight, so just briefly:

• Michael Tomasky observes that the general public have developed antibodies to the nonstop lies coming from the OAFPOTUS.
• Adam Kinzinger takes on the big piggy in the Oval Office as well as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-GA) resignation late last week.
• Chris Dalla Riva explains how the US copyright system bears some of the responsibility for the enshitiffication of music and movies.
• Tim Wu thinks the federal judge who dismissed the government's antitrust case against Meta "did so in the face of strong evidence to the contrary, not to mention common sense."

Finally, Robert Wright asks, "is Marc Andreesen just flat-out dumb?" Quite possibly.

First, just a reminder: anthropogenic climate change (aka global warming) will not wipe out humanity; but it will lead to millions of deaths, plus immense costs and disruptions, which the next few generations will bear. And we could have prevented it.

Another reminder: despite what this map shows, as soon as the first real cold of the 2025-26 winter hits after Thanksgiving, lots of people will say "this disproves global warming." No, climate theory predicts weather extremes with the average temperature of the planet going up. It will still get cold in winter.

With all that preamble, here is NOAA's temperature anomaly map for October:

Congratulations, Mongolia, Botswana, and Guyana, you had below-average temperatures last month. The record warmth in the Antarctic, where much of the world's land-locked ice lives, should raise eyebrows too. And out of the 140 years we have kept records, October was warmer than 124 of them in the US.

It feels like we have way more color today than we usually have this late in November:

The short-term climate forecast calls for below-freezing temperatures for most of next week, so I expect even the last remaining maple holdouts will drop the rest of their leaves pretty soon. I'll enjoy this for now, though.