My strategy of sleeping until noon (i.e., 6am Chicago time) to avoid shifting my body clock didn't exactly work this trip. That's because, unfortunately, my hotel's air conditioning is being replaced. Fortunately I'm here now, when it's 23°C, not a month ago when it was 34°C. And fortunately, my windows open. That means I had the windows wide open last night, which, unfortunately, meant the sun poured in starting around 6am. Fortunately, I have this view:
And the hotel left a couple of big fans in the room, fortunately.
Then, unfortunately, this terribly disappointing thing is also going on right now:
That's The Blackbird, my second-favorite pub in London, undergoing a gut rehab, apparently. It closed mid-July and won't open again until mid-October, according to my hotel's staff.
But fortunately, the Prince of Teck is just down the road a bit, and they have a pretty good Full English breakfast:
Now, having only gotten four hours of sleep last night, I'm going to have a kip. Because fortunately, I have absolutely nothing scheduled for today.
Yesterday, the Cubs and Mets played to a 1-1 draw at Wrigley when the game got suspended in the 10th due to torrential rain. (They resume in about 20 minutes.) My department bought us rooftop tickets, so we got to see most of the game between the waves of thunderstorms that preceded and interrupted it:
I got supremely lucky: the first wave of thunderstorms hit just as I was getting on the bus to go to the park, finished its deluge just as I got off the bus, and the second wave hit while I was on the bus going back home. So I caught the tail end of the second wave, but only a few drops between the bus and my house.
I'll update this post with the final score whenever they have one.
Update: The Cubs won, 2-1 in the 11th.
It's official: until noon today, I hadn't left the state of Illinois for 215 days, 20 hours, and 15 minutes. Then I crossed into Wisconsin and stayed about a hundred meters over the border for a few hours. The previous record was 214 days and change, set when I was, oh, 11.
Today is also the 30th anniversary of the day I arrived at university. Tomorrow, I'll have art, unless I lose my nerve.
Also, it was really, really warm today. But that wasn't a record, just a bad day to spend outside.
Lots of running around today doing chores and such. Not that interesting, though I did pick out some paint colors.
Right, not that interesting.
At least you don't have to watch it dry.
The New York City subway, with its passive air exchange system and tunnels too small for active ventilation or air conditioning, have gotten excessively hot this summer:
On Thursday, temperatures inside at least one of the busiest stations reached 40°C—nearly 11°C warmer than the high in Central Park.
The Regional Plan Association, an urban planning think tank for the greater metropolitan area, took a thermometer around the system’s 16 busiest stations, plus a few more for good measure, and shared the data with CityLab. A platform at Union Square Station had the 40°C reading at 1 p.m., which was the hottest they found, although Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall and Columbus Circle weren’t far off at 39°C and 38½°C, at around 10 and 11 a.m., respectively. Twelve out of the 16 busiest stops boiled at or over the 32°C mark in the late morning and early afternoon.
One might think that subway stations would offer crisp respite to sweaty New Yorkers, being underground and all. But you’d be wrong. Heat doesn’t only “rise”—it just diffuses to cooler areas, which can include below-ground spaces. Plus, only a few of the city’s 472 stations are equipped with air conditioning; most rely on a passive ventilation system better known for their Marilyn Monroe moments above ground. This system was built in the days before AC, and the MTA says it’s not possible to squeeze the station-cooling machinery that other metro systems have inside New York’s narrow tunnels. Meanwhile, the units that cool passengers inside cars actually shed heat into the stations as trains pass through.
That onboard air-conditioning can fail, too. The MTA has also seen a rising number of complaints about overheated cars in recent years. In today’s issue of Signal Problems, his indispensable newsletter focused on subway accountability, the journalist Aaron Gordon reports that “about two percent of all subway cars in service on any given day might not have working A/C,” according to the MTA. That means at least 100 cars are roasting passengers on any given day this summer.
This problem also bedevils the London Underground.
Meanwhile, here in Chicago, we're having our 73rd day this year above 27°C, just 10 short of the record. Given the normal number of temperatures that warm between now and October, I think we'll probably set a new one.
And the sunlight here looks eerily orange and hazy today, because of climate change-driven wildfires out west.
Welcome to the future.
It's the hottest weekend of the year so far. We beat the high temperature on June 30th by half a degree (35.6°C v 36.1°C) yesterday, and so far today we've hovered around 32°C for the past four hours. So, naturally, I walked about 5 km earlier today to check out some open houses.
I'm ready for fall. Just as soon as I take my second shower of the day...
It's 25°C and partly cloudy today, so I'm spending as much as possible outside. Regular posting will resume when I'm once again trapped inside by some unfortunate event, like work.
That's my guess for how often Chicago's weather looks like this. Today's forecast calls for cloudless 23°C skies and a cool, clear evening.
So, naturally, I'm going to try to walk 30 klicks.
And I'm totally not watching the England/Sweden match that's on right now. Nope.
I'll have an update to the semi-annual Chicago Sunrise Chart later this week, but otherwise not a lot to post about. Or, anyway, that I want to post about.
At least the weather cooled off. We finished June hot and sticky but yesterday a cold front brought delightful summer weather to the city. It's predicted to last about another four minutes.
This past weekend's performances went better than I expected, even with last night's temperature hovering around 32°C on the Pritzker stage.
Our entire Memorial Day weekend has been hot. Yesterday's official temperature at O'Hare (36°C) hit an all-time record for May 27th and was the warmest day in Chicago since 23 July 2012, almost 6 years ago.
So let me tell you how great it felt to be outside, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and black jeans, singing, for an hour.
The forecast calls for record heat today (35°C) and then some modest cooling by Wednesday.
For the record, that means spring lasted about 24 hours last week.