Who doesn't like the fun and adventure of spring weather in Chicago? I mean, you don't see temperature graphs like this coming from Los Angeles:
At 5:07 pm on Friday—only about 40 hours ago—it was 23.3°C, I had all my windows open, and I had a polo shirt on when I walked Cassie a few minutes later. Now it's 1.2°C, the temperature has dropped steadily since 3pm yesterday, and I'm about to put on a winter coat because it's bloody snowing.
This week we'll continue to whipsaw around the freezing mark, with forecast high temperatures of 11°C tomorrow and 18°C on Tuesday, followed by forecast lows of -1°C Wednesday night and 0°C on Thursday night.
Eventually we'll have consistently warm temperatures, and in fairness the snow isn't sticking. But March really knows how to torture us.
As forecast, O'Hare had an official high temperature of 26°C yesterday, the warmest temperature recorded there since 4pm on October 30th and the normal high temperature for June 10th. Inner Drive Technology WHQ got all the way up to 23.3°C just after 5pm, so we had all the windows open until the squall line blasted through after midnight.
Today we have a lot of wind and a lot of dust blown up from storms in Texas and Oklahoma. Without the dust, we'd have clear blue skies right now:
Remember what I wrote Thursday about how the air usually looked this time of year back in the 1980s? Today is just a little hazier. Well, OK, quite a bit hazier:
Even Cassie is wondering what that scent is:
That's the scent of climate change, baby. Same as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Fitting that we've got the resurrected zombie corpse of Herbert Hoover in the White House today.
It's 21°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ and 22°C at O'Hare right now. In addition to being the normal high temperature for May 20th, that reading at O'Hare is the warmest since 11pm on October 30th. The forecast for O'Hare predicts a high near 26°C, which is normal for June 10th.
Which is all a long way of saying: I'm about to change into a polo shirt, take Cassie for a walk, and open every window in my house—not necessarily in that order.
By the way, the eclipse last night was really cool. I only wish I could have fallen back asleep more quickly after getting up to view it.
After our gorgeous weather Sunday and Monday, yesterday's cool-down disappointed me a bit. But we have clear-ish skies and lots of sun, which apparently will persist until Friday night. I'm also pleased to report that we will probably have a good view of tomorrow night's eclipse, which should be spectacular. I'll even plan to get up at 1:30 to see totality.
Elsewhere in the world, the OAFPOTUS continues to explore the outer limits of stupidity (or is it frontotemporal dementia?):
- No one has any idea what the OAFPOTUS's economic plan is, though Republicans seem loath to admit that's because he hasn't got one.
- Canada and the EU, our closest friends in the world since the 1940s, have gotten a bit angry with us lately. Can't think why.
- Paul Krugman frets that while he "always considered, say, Mitch McConnell a malign influence on America, while I described Paul Ryan as a flimflam man, I never questioned their sanity... But I don’t see how you can look at recent statements by Donald Trump and Elon Musk without concluding that both men have lost their grip on reality."
- On the same theme, Bret Stephens laments that "Democracy dies in dumbness."
- ProPublica describes a horrifying recording of Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek's meeting with senior SSA officials last week in which he demonstrated why the OAFPOTUS pulled him from a terminal job as "the ultimate faceless bureaucrat" to head the agency. (Some people have greatness thrust upon 'em?)
- Molly White sees "no public good" for a "strategic bitcoin reserve," but is too polite to call the idea a load of thieving horseshit.
- Author John Scalzi threads the needle on boycotting billionaires.
- Writing for StreetsBlog Chicago, Steven Vance argues that since the city has granted parking relief to almost every new development in the past few years, why not just get rid of parking minimums altogether?
Finally, in a recent interview with Monica Lewinsky, Molly Ringwald said that John Hughes got the idea for Pretty in Pink while out with her and her Sixteen Candles co-stars at Chicago's fabled Kingston Mines. Cool.
The temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ just hit 17.5°C, which it hasn't hit since 5:54pm on November 5th. That's almost 125 days, quite a while to go without wearing a jacket outside.
Unfortunately, spring weather isn't the only thing in the news today:
Finally, Metra is seeking public input on a plan to rename the heavy-rail lines around Chicago. Right now, each line has an historic name and a different color. The favored proposal would be to give each line a letter signifying the direction from downtown, plus a number. For example, the Union Pacific North line that goes by my house would be renamed N1. And all the lines departing from a single downtown station would get the same color (green in the case of the three UP lines). I think this is a good proposal, and would bring Chicago in line with international cities like Berlin and Paris.
It's 13°C and sunny, so despite having added a couple of really useful features to Weather Now (still in the dev/test environment; sorry), I'm going to take Cassie on a 45-minute walk and then have a beer.
Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the Brews & Choos Project's high-water mark before the pandemic. On 7 March 2020, I went farther than I'd ever gone before in search of breweries to add to the list, visiting Penrose and Stockholm's in Geneva, then More and Lunar in Villa Park on the way back. A few days later the world stopped for a while. It would be almost three months before I visited another brewery.
Yesterday, I took a half-day of PTO, braved some crappy early-spring weather, and met up with my Brews & Choos buddy at a relatively new place in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. We managed to visit five South Side breweries, and—here's the science part—consumed no more than 3 pints of beer over 5 hours. It was a marathon, not a sprint, after all.
In any event, I've got a lot of photos to go through and a lot of reviews to write, so look for them to come out over the next few days.
And hey, if you want to see more Brews & Choos reviews, contribute to The Daily Parker! Your $5 contribution keeps the site running for a day—or buys a tasing-size beer.
Another reason to contribute: I've started re-developing The Daily Parker's code from scratch. I changed direction slightly on an existing project to make it a blog on steroids, and I think it'll be super-cool when complete. So how about throwing in another $5 a month to support that, too?
Take today's temperatures, for example:
Fortunately, Cassie got a half-hour walk at 7am and a 25-minute walk at noon, just before the cold front came through. And the next couple of days will be...more Spring:
This Afternoon
Snow. Steady temperature around 1. Breezy, with a northwest wind around 45 km/h, with gusts as high as 70 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than one centimeter possible.
Tonight
Snow showers likely before midnight, then isolated flurries between midnight and 4am. Cloudy, then gradually becoming partly cloudy, with a low around -3. Windy, with a northwest wind 45 to 50 km/h decreasing to 35 to 40 km/h after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 75 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of less than a half centimeter possible.
Thursday
Sunny, with a high near 4. Breezy, with a west wind 30 to 35 km/h decreasing to 20 to 25 km/h in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 55 km/h.
Thursday Night
A slight chance of rain before 1am, then a slight chance of snow between 1am and 3am, then a slight chance of rain and snow after 3am. Increasing clouds, with a low around 1. West wind 10 to 15 km/h, with gusts as high as 25 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
Friday
Snow likely. Cloudy, with a high near 2. West southwest wind 10 to 15 km/h becoming northeast in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
But...it'll be 14° on Monday, 17°C on Tuesday, and 16°C on Wednesday, which will feel a lot more like spring. And Cassie will get more walks.
The National Weather Service Chicago office released its report on the 2024-25 winter today, the first day of meteorological spring. Highlights:
- Average temperature: -2.6°C (0.4°C below normal)
- Total snowfall: 302 mm (450 mm below normal, 10th least snowiest)
- Total precipitation: 113 mm (42 mm below normal)
They go on:
At Chicago, the average high temperature was 34.1 degrees, which is 0.5 degrees below normal. The average low temperature was 20.5 degrees, which is 1.1 degrees below normal. The mean average temperature for the season was 27.3 degrees, which is 0.8 degrees below normal. 4.43 inches of liquid precipitation were recorded, which is 1.64 inches below normal. 11.9 inches of snow were recorded, which is 17.7 inches below normal.
Daily and top ten monthly records established for Chicago this past winter...
- December: None
- January: None
- February: None
The following top ten seasonal records were set for Chicago this past winter:
** 10th least snowiest winter on record with 11.9 inches of snow.
In other words, an average winter for the cold but a very mild winter for the snow. Nothing too extreme, nothing too nice, nothing too awful.
NCDC predicts a fairly average spring, starting with a fairly normal storm bearing down on us this week. Because it wouldn't be early March without a reminder that our weather doesn't get consistently nice until June.
We've got a classic weather event rolling through Chicago right now:
What makes it atypical is the low pressure over northeast Minnesota (980 mB) and the tight pressure gradient around it. So while the temperature at IDTWHQ has gone up 7.2°C (13°F) in five hours—2°C in the last hour alone—we've also got a bit of wind. O'Hare reports southwest winds at 16 kts with peak one-minute winds of 39 kts, which qualifies as a fresh gale.
But you see that blue line curving through Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming? That cold front will slide through Chicago overnight, bringing us below freezing for a couple of days.
For what it's worth, the normal temperature range for March 1st is -3.1°C to 4.9°C. We should get that entire range between 8pm and 3am tonight.
So this isn't really that unusual for Chicago. March has the most variable weather of any month here. That's why we dress in layers.