The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Ten days to After Hours

The Apollo Chorus annual fundraiser/cabaret is on April 1st, and tickets are still available. If you can't make it, you can still donate.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:

And finally, screenings of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the new slasher pic featuring Winnie and Piglet as serial killers, will not be shown in Hong Kong and Macau, because Chinese dictator Xi Jinping thinks it's a jab at him. Seriously.

First sunny day since I returned

We had four completely-overcast days in a row, including one with some blowing snow, so I'm happy today has been completely clear. Tomorrow might even get above 10°C—which would at least get into normal March temperatures. This whole winter has been weird, as the next few will likely be until temperature increases start leveling out.

In other news:

Finally, Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders explain how AI could write our laws in the future.

Quiet Saturday morning

The storm predicted to drop 100 mm of snow on Chicago yesterday missed us completely. That made my Brews & Choos research a lot more pleasant, though I did tromp all over the place in heavy boots that I apparently didn't need. Of course, had I not worn them, I would now be writing about my cold, wet socks.

So while I'm getting two reviews together for later this week, go ahead and read this:

Finally, author John Scalzi celebrates the 25th anniversary of his domain name scalzi.com, exactly one month before I registered my own. But as I will point out again in a couple of posts later this spring, The Daily Parker started (as braverman.org) well before his blog. Still, 25 years is a long time for a domain to have a single owner.

Sprint 80

At my day job, we just ended our 80th sprint on the project, with a lot of small but useful features that will make our side of the app easier to maintain. I like productive days like this. I even voted! And now I will rest on my laurels for a bit and read these stories:

Finally, the European Space Agency wants to establish a standard time zone for the moon. Since one day on the moon is 29.4 days here, I don't quite know what that will look like.

Why doesn't the AP want me to give them money?

I spent way more time than I should have this morning trying to set up an API key for the Associated Press data tools. Their online form to sign up created a general customer-service ticket, which promptly got closed with an instruction to...go to the online sign-up form. They also had a phone number, which turned out to have nothing to do with sales. And I've now sent two emails a week apart to their "digital sales" office, with crickets in response.

The New York Times had an online setup that took about five minutes, and I'm already getting stuff using Postman. Nice.

Meanwhile:

Finally, I've got a note on my calendar to check out the Karen's Diner pop-up in Wrigleyville next month. Because who doesn't want to be abused by servers?

Another beautiful day in February

Yesterday, Cassie and I walked about 11 km and ended the day sitting outside at Spiteful Brewery. In February. Today the weather looks about the same (right now it's 12°C at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters), but between work and rehearsal tonight I can't just sit on my porch reading. Dang.

The forecast predicts it'll stay below freezing from Thursday night until Saturday lunchtime, but hey, it's still February. One March-like day during this stretch of April weather doesn't bother me.

Good day for a walk

Here we have a typical mid-March temperature profile for Chicago:

Of course, that's not from mid-March, that's today. It got up to 9.1°C at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters, without a cloud in the sky, and it looks likely to do the same tomorrow. Cassie got a 5 km walk earlier today and I plan to do 7 km tomorrow.

Consequently I won't spend a lot of time banging away at my keyboard this afternoon. Probably not much tomorrow, either.

So bright! Much sun!

I can't describe how much better I feel today after weeks of gloomy, cloudy weather. WGN's Tom Skilling confirms it's not all in my imagination:

It's official—despite today's sun, January 2023 will go down on the books as the cloudiest January since sunshine records were taken starting 129 years ago in 1894. That's the word from Frank Wachowski who reports the month hosted only 18% of its possible sun--eclipsing the 1998 record of 20%!

On the other hand, the temperature outside Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters means Cassie won't get her hour of walks today, and I probably won't get my 10,000 steps:

And yet, one 24-hour period with temperatures skirting -15°C doesn't suck. We're still having a warm winter, all things considered. The December and January temperatures we've experienced put us in the top 20 warmest winters in history.

February, though. February might kick our butts. Except...

Know hope.

I just want to see the sun again

The graphical forecast for Chicago encourages me: it shows that the 100% overcast we've had for the last week will get a bit thinner tomorrow afternoon, then a bit thinner Tuesday morning, then...go back to another week of 95% cloud cover. Sigh. At least the sun finally sets after 5pm on Thursday.

Of course, the clouds actually keep Chicago warm in the winter, and the warm air keeps the clouds from thinning out until a strong enough front blows them away. So despite the lack of sun, the temperature still won't go below -8°C, which isn't bad at all for January.

Anyway, if I see the sun tomorrow, I'll post a photo, if for no other reason than to give me something to look at when it goes away for the next week.

Warm and cloudy January

With 10 days to go to solidify the record, Chicago has tied for cloudiest January in history, with 20% of possible sunshine (normal is 40%), with 11 of the first 19 days of 2023 giving us exactly zero sun. The record, set in 1998, is 20 of 31 days without sun, and three recent Januaries (2017, 2020, and 2021) saw no sun on 16 of 31 days.

The cause, though, is reflected in us seeing the second-warmest January since records began in 1871, with every single day having an above-normal temperature.

The culprit? A persistent La Niña system in the south Pacific combined with global warming, as WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling explains:

You know, this is a La Niña winter and we’ve done some in-house work on these. Since 1950, La Nina winters have been very volatile in this area. You move from arctic air masses one week to unseasonably mild air the next. We had that cold blast that hit around Christmas week. Now, we’re in the 22nd consecutive day of above normal temperatures. This already is the second-warmest January on the books here — at least so far it is. You have to go back to 1850 to find a January 1-17 period that’s warmer than what we’ve seen this year.

January is typically our coldest and one of our snowiest months and home to some of our blockbuster historic snowstorms, not the least of which is the benchmark blizzard of 1967 that shut the city down.

In Chicago, the winters of the 1970s were collectively our coldest and snowiest on record — and we have records that go back to 1871 and the Great Chicago Fire.

The coldest temperatures occurred in the 1980s. We had back-to-back 26 below zero temperatures in January 1982. And then we had the all-time coldest three years later in 1985 (that was minus 27 degrees).

If you don’t believe climate change is at work, just look at what’s happened to the character of our winters around here. While the decade of the 1970s was the coldest and snowiest on record, we have warmed precipitously since then.

Last time I looked, our winters are running more than 3 degrees on average warmer than the winters of the ’70s, which is a big change. I don’t know if you remember the 1970s, but those winters were barbaric. We’d have these incredible snowstorms and then they’d be followed by these sieges of subzero weather. We don’t get that anymore.

We still have 38 days of winter left, however, and Sunday could see more normal temperatures plus 25 mm or more of snow. And someday, we might even see the sun again.