Ah, Spring in Chicago, when the wind shifts ever so slightly to make you wish you'd layered better:
WGN's Tom Skilling explains what happened:
Temps down more than 16°C from Sunday’s levels Monday, largely the product of winds off the 9°C lake waters—warming returns over coming week with temps surging from 21°C Tuesday to 25°C Wednesday, 27°C Thursday and 26°C Friday but expect easterly lake breezes to cool immediate lakeshore areas each day this week. Weather dries and mixed sun appears Tuesday with lots of sun Wednesday, but wet weather returns with gulf moisture late week and this weekend.
The southbound pneumonia front which induced Sunday afternoon and evening’s sharp pullback ignited explosive t-storm development mainly south of Chicago late Sunday into Sunday night. These storm’s lightning displays and hail production were impressive with some stunning rainfalls—like the 92 mm which fell at Grant Park in Kankakee County and the 82 mm in Will county’s Wilmington. Other impressive totals include 81 mm at Mendota, 71 mm at Carbon Hill and 62 mm at Channahon. But, while those rains were impressive, only 4 mm were reported at O’Hare and 3 mm at Midway Sunday into Monday.
It's unusual for me to go from A/C to heat in one day, but again, this is Chicago in May.
Today got away from me. I performed Beethoven's 9th Symphony last night and caught up on Cassie time today. We had beautiful, warm weather until about 8pm, too, so I didn't do any work at all.
Tomorrow we have crappy weather, so I'll post as usual.
I think I wrote software and read a lot. You know, just what I do today. Stuff like this:
This afternoon we concluded Sprint 84 with a boring deployment, which makes me happy. We've had only one moderately-exciting deployment this year, and even that one didn't take long to fix, so I'm doing something right.
Graupel are snowflakes covered in rime ice. They're like big styrofoam snowflakes, and because they form in warmer air, they melt almost immediately on contact with anything solid. Yesterday the Chicago Tribune had a handy explainer on the back page, just in case people were curious what was hitting them on the head standing on "temporary" railway platforms this morning. (Fuck Bruce Rauner and his entire party.)
Sorry. I get a little grumpy when I wake up on May Day to mid-March weather. With graupel.
Cassie and I had a lovely time yesterday afternoon. I grabbed some pizza at one of my childhood favorite places, then we did a 5½ kilometer walk around the Skokie Lagoons:
She seemed to enjoy it:
Later this afternoon I'll jot down all of the news I didn't read while having a great time in the forest yesterday.
This weekend involved about 5 hours of dog walks, including 2 with another dog, a disruption to Cassie's environments (new bookshelves, details later), an art fair, and my friend's two toddlers (ages 2 and 4). We're both pooped.
Cassie literally. I know what she ate yesterday, and I'm so glad I got to see it again today.
The clouds have moved off to the east, so it's a bit warmer and a lot sunnier than yesterday. I still have to wait for an automated build to run. For some reason (which I will have to track down after lunch), our CI builds have gone from 22 minutes to 37. Somewhere in the 90 kB of logs I'll find out why.
Meanwhile, happy Fox News On Trial Day:
Finally, I've started reading The Odyssey, so I applaud National Geographic's article this month on the history of the ancient world in which Homer set the poem.
As happens about every other year, we woke up this morning to barely-above-freezing temperatures and this crap on the ground:
After record warmth last week, April decided to balance the scales yesterday:
All of the snow will melt in the next 24 hours as tomorrow's forecast calls for 11°C and sun, going up to 22°C by Thursday, but not before we get "scattered rain and snow showers" all day with winds up to 45 km/h. But then it goes back down to 2°C by Saturday...because April.
The next 48 hours will take Chicago from a 28°C summer afternoon to a 1°C winter morning:
We had a good run of four days over 26°C, and now spring returns. Tant pis.
On this day in 1998, I registered braverman.org, and just a few weeks later built the first draft of what became this blog. When I registered it, only about a million domain names existed, though 1998 turned out to be the year the Internet exploded worldwide. Just seven years earlier, only 100 .org names existed, so braverman.org may be one of the oldest .orgs out there. (For comparison, there are just about 350 million registered domain names today.)
Of course, the 25th anniversary of braverman.org hasn't yet become a global holiday, so a few other things happened in the last 24 hours:
- The Democratic Party really wants US Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) to retire, as it has become painfully clear she can no longer perform her duties in the Senate, preventing us from confirming new judges. Seriously, ma'am, go.
- We also want Justice Clarence Thomas (R) to go, especially after a new revelation that he sold property to the billionaire "friend" who has taken him on half-million-dollar vacations. Seriously, sir, go.
- At least his colleagues on the Supreme Court all seem unimpressed with the "independent state legislature" bullshit espoused by some right-wing Republican state legislators.
- New Republic's Timothy Noah thinks "remote work sucks," but (our hero writes from his open and airy home office just steps from his dog and refrigerator) not all of us do.
- Paul Krugman explains how immigrants are saving America's economy.
- The New York Times has a lot of good things to say about Chicago hosting next year's Democratic National Convention.
- Your local, urban apiary might actually be hurting your neighborhood.
Finally, we have another gorgeous day in Chicago, a bit cooler than yesterday where I live thanks to delightful lake breeze, but still more like July than April.