Events

The temperature started rising Thursday morning and, except for a little blip last night, keeps going up: The official temperature right now at O'Hare is 5°C—Δ36°C warmer than the low temperature Thursday morning. And wow, is it a slushy mess out there.

Just 72 hours ago, the official temperature in Chicago was -31°C. Right now, it's 0°C at O'Hare, the first time it's been above freezing since 11am Monday. Our 54-hour stretch of below-0°F temperatures was the 4th-longest such stretch. This has been an extraordinary few days, and it's just going to get weirder. Bonus: The Tribune has a collection of satellite photos from the European Space Agency of our polar vortex.

...will be to Bletchley Park: The National Museum of Computing is a must-see if you are ever in the UK. It was a short 30ish minute train ride up from London. We spent the whole afternoon there. There is a rebuild of the Colossus, the the world's first electronic computer. It had a single purpose: to help decipher the Lorenz-encrypted (Tunny) messages between Hitler and his generals during World War II. The Colossus Gallery housing the rebuild of Colossus tells that remarkable story. We saw...

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the entity responsible for our sewers and rivers in Chicago, warns that the record-breaking warm-up currently underway could overwhelm the system: As the warmer temperatures melt existing snow, the potential for flooding increases because the frozen ground is unable to absorb water and snow, causing runoff to flow immediately into sewers. Sewer systems, therefore, can become overwhelmed from the combination of normal sewage flow, rain and snow melt, a...

In descending order of pissed-off-making: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called making Election Day a holiday "a power grab," because more people voting does in fact take power away from the Republican Party. (We used to call this sort of thing a gaffe.) US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) criticized adolescent Sears Holdings CEO Eddie Lampert for exactly the things The Daily Parker has criticized him for all along. "It appears that you have enriched yourself while driving the company into...

My furnace has reached the limits of its ability to keep my apartment warm as the delta between inside and outside temperatures has hovered around Δ40°C for 48 hours now. Even though the temperature has started going up, and will continue to do so until hitting the nearly-tropical 10°C by mid-day Sunday, the outside air still hurts my face. Yesterday's official high was -23.3°C, and the low was -30.6°C. So we missed setting the all-time record cold high by Δ0.6°C, and we're a few degrees from the...

First, a helpful diagram from NOAA explaining how global warming has increased the Arctic Oscillation to give Chicago record-cold weather today: Even though this concept is beyond the ken of some people, global warming increases weather extremes in both directions. More Chiberia coverage: Crain's explains how beer distributors keep beer cans from exploding (a real possibility below -11°C). Schools, planes, trains, and automobiles government offices are closed today in Chicago. Also tomorrow. To keep the...

The official temperature at O'Hare got down to -31°C before 7am. Here at IDTWHQ it's -28.4°C. We didn't hit the all-time record (-32.8C) set in 1985, but wait! We will likely hit the low-maximum temperature record today. WGN reports that temperatures under -29°C have occurred only 15 times since records began 54,020 days ago. And the Wiccan coven next door has just received a shipment of battery-heated, thermal-insulated sports bras. So, I'll be working from the IDTWHQ today. And tomorrow.

As I noted last week, John Bercow MP, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has exercised more control over the Brexit debate in Parliament than previous speakers would have dared. Today, Parliament votes on amendments to the Brexit deal that could radically change its outcome, and Bercow is the one choosing which amendments, and which MPs, get heard. The Guardian has a podcast going even more into the details. And yesterday, the New Yorker brought the issue to the smart set: On Thursday, I spoke to...

Sure, it's -18°C outside, but check out the view: