Events

Last week, NASA announced data that show this year's El Niño event keeps growing, possibly even surpassing the 1997 event. But they can't yet predict the consequences: While scientists still do not know precisely how the current El Niño will affect the United States, the last large El Niño in 1997-98 was a wild ride for most of the nation. The “Great Ice Storm” of January 1998 crippled northern New England and southeastern Canada, but overall, the northern tier of the United States experienced long...

Illinois State Climatologist Jim Angel lists all the records Illinois set last year: The warmest December on record: 4.8°C, 5.9°C above average. The second warmest September – December on record: 11.8°C, 2.7°C above average. The 8th coldest February on record: -7.0°C, 6.4°C below average. Annual: 11.6°C, 0.2°C above average (not ranked, but of interest) Precipitation: The second wettest December on record 170.1 mm, 101.8 mm above average. The wettest November-December on record: 312.4 mm, 156.2 mm above...

First, from the scientist behind Deeply Trivial, a Times report that giving people money to answer survey questions makes their answers more accurate: [W]hen you ask people about the economy, the answers are less a statement of objectivity and more like what they’d say if you’d asked which pro football team was the best. That has important implications for democracy. How can people judge whether a party is effective if there is no sense of objective truth? And it could even have implications for the...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. I'm posting it as a regular post in addition to posting it as a permanent page, to maintain deep-linking archiving. The previous post was here. In just a few hours we'll see the latest sunrise of winter, until the days just before the change back to Standard Time in November. That will bring us something really rare: the latest sunrise in Chicago until November 2027, at 7:29am on November 6th. Thank leap years and orbital eccentricity for that. This...

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2016 4 Jan Latest sunrise until Oct 28th 07:19 16:33 9:13 28 Jan 5pm sunset 07:08 17:01 9:52 5 Feb 7am sunrise 07:00 17:11 10:10 20 Feb 5:30pm sunset 06:40 17:30 10:49 27 Feb 6:30am sunrise 06:30 17:39 11:08 12 Mar Earliest sunrise until Apr 17th Earliest sunset until Oct 24th 06:07 17:55 11:47 13 Mar Daylight saving time...

Here are some numbers illustrating 2015 (cf. 2014 also): I took only 14 trips and flew only 25 segments, visiting 7 states and 4 countries*. Of those, 11 flight segments took off or landed outside the US, which is the highest proportion of international-to-domestic flights in any single year. Those years in which I've flown more international segments were also heavy-travel years in general. For example, in 2001, my heaviest travel year ever, I flew 15 international segments—my record—out of 63...

Sorry, Hawai'i. Your UTC-10 is a full day behind Kiritimati, where it's already coming up on Saturday. But happy new year regardless! And to the few sailors and submariners hanging out in UTC-11, happy new year to you, too, in an hour or so.

Happy New Year from the Daily Parker. It's just past midnight in Chicago, so it's the "real" new year for me and everyone I'm with. Here's to 2016 improving on 2015, no matter who you are or how good 2015 turned out.

It's just past midnight UTC, so happy new year to all the world's properly-configured computers, wherever they may be. And to the UK, Portugal, and much of West Africa.

Since my company is closed today, and I have no obligations until late this afternoon, I'm taking my time fixing a bug and deploying a software package. So I actually have the bandwidth to read these articles right now, as opposed to "someday:" Citylab has a list of terms and myths they'd like to retire, including "Artisinal" and "Wider roads = less traffic." (They also have a list of traffic myths that need retiring too.) Back in November, Paris' Orly airport couldn't give pilots runway visual range...