A weak La Niña has already started affecting the weather in the United States, as this week's cold snap demonstrates. Weak La Niña events typically cause cooler, wetter winters in Chicago. Last night's temperature got down to -12.8°C (9°F), just a few degrees above the coldest December 5th on record. Normal for today would be 4.3°C (39.8°F); this godawful cold is 5°C below the normal low for the coldest day of the year, January 24th.
Fortunately the forecast this weekend calls for more seasonable temperatures near freezing, but it'll come with some more snow. Joy.
As I haven't got a lot going on until Monday, I hope to make more progress on the replacement for BlogEngine.NET I've been working on for a while. Over the last week I got it to the point where it shows blog entries and imports them from this version. Next up: image uploading and resizing. Right now it shows images at full size no matter how wide your screen is. That's sub-optimal, especially on mobile devices.
I'm not ready to release the link for the work-in-progress yet. Let me get a few more features done first. Next week, Monday through Sunday, will include two full Messiah rehearsals and two performances, but after that I should have lots of time through the beginning of January to work on the new project.
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.
I miss my old friend.
My new friend is pretty great, though.
I've been heads-down debugging, except for going to the meetings already on my calendar, and just realized I've got to leave for rehearsal soon. I'll have to come back to these fun little nuggets later:
- What is this bullshit the OAFPOTUS is pushing about "white genocide" in South Africa?
- After some consideration, James Fallows has come around to believing that the way Senate Democrats ended the government shutdown will actually help us next year.
- The Chicago City Council finance committee rejected Mayor Brandon Johnson's tax plan for the second year in a row, principally over his plan to tax every employer in the city with more than 200 100 workers $21 $18 a month per employee.
- Weakness in downtown the real estate market has pushed up property taxes all over the city, on average by 17%. My tax bill came Saturday and had a 12% increase, so I guess I got off lucky?
Finally McSweeney's wonders what it's like to work for an evil company and still consider yourself a good person.
My Brews & Choos buddy and I repeated our walk from 2023 along the North Branch Trail to Barnaby's of Northbook because they have really great pizza. This time we skipped all detours and went straight up from the trail to the restaurant, thereby saving over an hour of walking and, therefore, getting pizza sooner.
It helped that Chicago tied the record high temperature yesterday, hitting 21.7°C (71°F) between 2 and 3 pm. We started with cool and gloomy weather that got progressively better throughout the walk, contra 2023 where it started cool and sunny and turned grim as we got closer to our destination.
We also saw some wildlife. The buck stopped here:
I think the two of them just wanted some alone time and hoped the humans would continue on their ways. We didn't see any other deer on the walk, though, so clearly the others found more privacy than these two.
Before I get to the best form of public transit available in the US, let's everyone say hello to my sister's dog, Omen:
Omen is a whippet. Good. (She's quite devo-ted to him.)
Anyway, this is how I got from the BART to the start of my 5.5 kilometer walk on Saturday:
If you take the Powell and Hyde line, the best part comes at the corner of Hyde and Lombard, at the top of Russian Hill. Just look at this view, and imagine seeing Alcatraz, Angel Island, and Tiburon directly ahead! (I have seen them from here. Trust me*.)
During my walk, I got to the end of the fog bank just before the Bay Bridge, and caught these cool lighting effects:
* OK, don't trust me. Here are two other photos I took from the same spot, the top one in April 2005, and the bottom one in May 2012:
I don't enjoy taking 6 am flights, of course, but they do have advantages. I left my hotel at 6:11 am and was through SFO security by 6:25. That's even faster than last year!
I'm a little less enthused about this, however:
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Chicago IL
224 AM CST Sun Nov 9 2025
Northern Cook-Central Cook-Southern Cook-Eastern Will-
Including the cities of Chicago, Peotone, Northbrook, Crete,
Evanston, Lemont, Park Forest, Schaumburg, Cicero, Oak Park, La
Grange, Des Plaines, Oak Forest, Oak Lawn, Calumet City, Beecher,
Palatine, and Orland Park
224 AM CST Sun Nov 9 2025
...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO NOON CST
MONDAY...
* WHAT...Dangerous to impossible travel conditions due to intense
lake effect snow expected. Snow rates in excess of 3 inches per
hour, localized total snow accumulations of 12 to 18 inches, and
northerly wind gusts in excess of 30 mph are expected.
* WHERE...Central Cook, Eastern Will, Northern Cook, and Southern
Cook Counties.
* WHEN...From 9 PM this evening to noon CST Monday.
* IMPACTS...Snow rates in excess of 3 inches per hour will cripple
travel, including during the Monday morning commute. Strong
northerly wind gusts in excess of 30 mph will lead to greatly
reduced visibility, especially near the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Periods of thundersnow will occur, as well.
* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Lake effect snow is often very localized,
with conditions varying from safe to dangerous across just a few
miles. Snow totals in the Winter Storm Warning area may vary
considerably from one location to the next.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
Persons should consider delaying all travel while and where the lake
effect snow is ongoing.
Unfortunately for me, my work laptop is in my downtown office, and my most important meetings tomorrow are between 10 and 11:30. Because the forecast is for lake-effect snow, we have no way to predict exactly where it will hit. I've seen these things produce 30 cm of snow on one block and nothing on the next.
Right now, though, the weather looks good for aviation, and my plane appears to be here and ready to fly. We'll find out tomorrow whether I'll be able to make it to the office.
After dragging my tired ass to Peet's just as they opened at 6 am (8 am back home), I got the same tired ass to the BART station just down the street and discovered that the Red Line operates as a shuttle between Millbrae and SFO sometimes. This knowledge came to me after I took an unplanned round-trip to the airport, learning this bit of BART lore at the cost of 25 minutes of my life.
I did make it to Powell and Market before 8:30 am, which allowed me plenty of time to take the oldest form of public transit in the city from there up to Hyde and Beach, then walk from there to the Caltrain station on 4th street, where I caught a train to San Jose and then a VTA light rail trolley to the closest stop near my family's house.
I'll have photos when I get back to Chicago, which I hope will be tomorrow. I've already ordered a Lyft for 4:15 am, which sounds awful except that I usually get up around 6:30 am in Chicago anyway.
For now, I'm going to digest this bit of rice I picked up from a local Millbrae Mandarin spot I like, then collapse.