The Daily Parker

I broke away from my last day of work in 2022 around 2:15 to take Cassie on a 3½-kilometer walk. It's 14°C (!!!) right now so almost every snowflake has melted into a thin layer of mud over the entire city. No problems, so far; I keep old towels by the front door and Cassie expects me to wipe her paws when we come in.

Today I learned that I need to close the gate at the top of my stairs whenever we go outside on a day like this. I learned this while chasing Cassie up the stairs and through the living room while shouting "NO!", which, of course, made her run faster to her happy place; i.e., the living room sofa. Fortunately I keep the sofa covered in a $7 Target blanket because of her. Unfortunately, I had just washed it.

Cassie and I have forgiven each other but not before I carried her downstairs and put her in the bathtub. The floors only took about 15 minutes to clean up and the blanket went back into the washing machine whence it came this morning.

Dogs.

I did catch this in Mother Jones, though, and it took the edge off wiping muddy pawprints from several floors and a staircase. It seems that finally, finally!, more cities understand that parking minimums waste land, gas, and money:

California will become the first state to enact a ban on parking minimums [in January], halting their use in areas with public transport in a move that Gov. Gavin Newsom called a “win-win” for reducing planet-heating emissions from cars, as well as helping alleviate the lack of affordable housing in a state that has lagged in building new dwellings.

Several cities across the country are now rushing doing the same, with Anchorage, Alaska, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Nashville, Tennessee, all recently loosening or scrapping requirements for developers to build new parking lots. “These parking minimums have helped kill cities,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School who accused political leaders of making downtowns “look like bombs hit them” by filling them with parking lots.

Climate campaigners and public transport advocates have seized upon the previously esoteric issue of parking minimums, posting aerial pictures on social media demonstrating the vast swathes of prime urban land given over to parking lots and pushing city councils to foster denser communities with more opportunities to walk, cycle or catch buses and trains rather than simply drive.

Cities such as Buffalo, New York, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, scaled back parking minimums a few years ago and have reported a surge in activity to transform previously derelict buildings into shops, apartments and restaurant. Developers previously saw as such work as unviable due to the requirement to build plots of car parking, in many cases several times larger than the building itself.

Just look at this aerial view of downtown Kansas City, Mo., after MODOT destroyed it with one road. Or these photos of empty mall parking lots on Black Friday, the day traffic engineers use to set parking minimums.

I hope that I live long enough to see North America correct the planning mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s, and get at least to the point Europe achieved ten years ago.

Southwest Airlines, generally known for operational excellence, had a bad weekend from which they still have not recovered:

Tens of thousands of flights have been canceled across the country due to the winter storm and other issues, spoiling holiday plans for many — and Midway has been hit particularly hard by the Christmas chaos. As of Tuesday morning, at least 245 flights there had been canceled in the past 24 hours, according to the Department of Aviation.

Many cancellations are coming from budget staple Southwest Airlines, which is flying “roughly one-third of our schedule for the next several days,” a spokesperson said. Other reports say the airline is telling many travelers the earliest they can be rebooked is Dec. 31.

The U.S. Department of Transportation now says it will “examine” Southwest’s “unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays.”

What in the name of Daedalus happened? Details emerge:

In a statement on its website, Southwest called its own performance "unacceptable."

It said that while it was fully staffed for the holiday travel period, the brutal weather forced daily changes to its flight schedule "at a volume and magnitude that still has the tools our teams use to recover the airline operating at capacity."

Unlike many other U.S. air carriers, Southwest operates on what is known as a point-to-point flight route system, meaning a plane will fly consecutive routes, picking up different crews along the way.

In normal times, this can allow Southwest to operate more flights over a given 24-hour period than other carriers, said Scott Meyerowitz, executive editor of The Points Guy travel site.

But if an airport goes offline because of weather, and a flight cannot reach its destination, the point-to-point system has a cascading cancellation effect, he said.

The weather included a deadly snowstorm in Western New York that so far has left more than 30 people dead.

The temperature here at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters peaked at -5°C, the warmest we've had since 2:30pm on Thursday. Next Thursday it'll hit 10°C, which is 32°C (57°F) warmer than Saturday's overnight low. Welcome to Chicago in the era of rapid climate change.

I hope we don't get any more really horrific cold snaps this winter, but I expect we will. For now, though, I'm going to take Cassie on the longest walk she's had in almost a week.

The Arctic air mass has arrived:

We didn't actually get that much snow, though:

On her evening walk last night, Cassie wanted to run around in the snow in circles for a bit, so I let her. But even with her double coat, after 4 minutes she was shivering, so we had to go in. She will not enjoy today at all.

One other thing of note. I got myself one of the coolest and geekiest toys I could ever have imagined:

That shows the location of every CTA train running right now. I might have to get one for London, too. And in a couple of days, it might become a practical toy, when the weather gets warm enough to go outside and ride the CTA again.

It cooled off a bit this afternoon:

We've hit -11°C, down from 1.1°C right before that sharp turn at 12:32, and it keeps dropping. Plus, we've got ourselves some snow. This is 1:40pm:

And this is 3:40pm:

Updates as conditions warrant.

In the last 24 hours, the temperature forecast hasn't changed but the snow forecast has:

Right now it's a calm, overcast 0°C. But then we have this from the National Weather Service:

Today
Snow, mainly after 11am. The snow could be heavy at times. Areas of blowing snow after 3pm. Temperature falling to around -13°C by 5pm. Wind chill values as low as -25°C. Breezy, with a southwest wind 10 to 20 km/h becoming northwest 30 to 40 km/h. Winds could gust as high as 55 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 5 to 9 centimeters possible.

Tonight
Snow. Widespread blowing snow, mainly after midnight. Low around -21°C. Wind chill values as low as -37°C. Windy, with a west northwest wind 40 to 45 km/h increasing to 45 to 50 km/h after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 75 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 7 centimeters possible.

Friday
Snow showers likely, mainly before noon. Widespread blowing snow. Cloudy and cold, with a high near -17°C. Wind chill values as low as -37°C. Windy, with a west wind 50 to 55 km/h, with gusts as high as 80 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of less than one centimeter possible.

Friday Night
Isolated snow showers before midnight, then scattered flurries after midnight. Widespread blowing snow. Mostly cloudy, with a low around -18°C. Wind chill values as low as -33°C. Windy, with a west wind 40 to 50 km/h, with gusts as high as 80 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 20%.

Ah, but here's the Chicago in December part: the forecast for next week says we could see temperatures jump to 10°C by Friday. Welcome to the land of building character.

At least the streets will probably get cleaned by Friday morning. (Chicago's Streets & Sanitation knows what they're doing.)

This looks fun:

WGN fleshes out the forecast's bones:

• Snow develops Thursday – beginning in far western sections (west of Interstate-39) during the morning and spreading east with deteriorating conditions across the area by early-mid afternoon
• Blizzard conditions possible, particularly late Thursday night through Friday afternoon (heavy blinding blowing snow with visibility under a quarter mile or less for at least 3 consecutive hours). Very difficult and dangerous travel conditions.
• Wind gusts to 90 km/h may cause power outages. Winds shifting to the W/NW area-wide by Thursday afternoon with initial gusts 50-60 km/h, peak gusts 90 km/h+ later Thursday night and early Friday.
• Dangerous life threatening wind chills, falling temps Thursday afternoon. Sub-zero [Fahrenheit] wind chills possible by late afternoon and early evening Thursday. Increasing winds and falling temps could eventually result in wind chills of -28°C to -37°C by Friday/Friday night with wind chills well below -18°C continuing through the weekend.

So, I had planned to work downtown tomorrow, which will still happen, just for a much shorter interval. And I had planned to let Cassie hang out with her friends at day camp all day, because my darling middle-aged dog has the energy of a whippet puppy if she doesn't get many hours of play a week.

And, as I mentioned yesterday, I also had planned to review a couple of breweries Friday afternoon. That will also have to wait.

As long as I don't lose electricity, Cassie and I will ride it out at home Friday. And if the power goes out, at least I have a gas fireplace and a warm dog.

We get one or two every year. The National Weather Service predicts that by Friday morning, Chicago will have heavy snowfall and gale-force winds, just what everyone wants two days before Christmas. By Saturday afternoon we'll have clear skies—and -15°C temperatures with 400 mm of snow on the ground. Whee!

We get to share our misery with a sizeable portion of the country as the bomb cyclone develops over the next three days. At least, once its gone and we have a clear evening Saturday or Sunday, we can see all five of the naked-eye planets just after sunset.

Meanwhile, I'm about to start my team's Sprint 75 Review, the last one of 2022, which contains a few goodies we put off because we spent most of our time on client requests. We have a strange habit of doing what paying customers know they want before we add the things they don't know they want.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world:

• David Zipper points out that Clear has built a business around privatizing a US Government service, which makes things worse for everyone.
• Sorry, time and water are the only things that cure a hangover.
• New York Magazine examines the earth-shaking scandal of "Nepo Babies."
• Just a few kilometers from here, a local residents organization managed to save all 29 mature trees that the Department of Water Management "needed" to cut down to replace a 100-year-old sewer.

Finally, director James Cameron ended all debate about whether Jack and Rose could both have survived in Titanic: "Cameron maintains that Jack simply had to die, telling The Sun that 'if I had to make the raft smaller, it would have been smaller.'" Because the story, you see, required it.

What a delight to wake up for the second day in a row and see the sun. After 13 consecutive days of blah, even the -11°C cold that encouraged Cassie and me to get her to day care at a trot didn't bother me too much.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast says a blizzard will (probably) hit us next weekend, so I guess I'll have time to read all of these stories sitting on the couch with my dog:

• The House Select Committee on the January 6th Insurrection referred the XPOTUS to the Justice Department on four criminal counts.
• Incoming Rep. George Santos (R-NY) of Long Island appears to have fabricated everything in his resume.
• In what for anyone else would count as an own goal, the Clown Prince of Twitter ran a poll over the weekend that revealed 57% of Twitter users want him gone.
• Freddie DeBoer wants the word "unhoused" gone.
• Timothy Noah equates Sam Bankman-Fried's story with Charles Dickens' Hard Times, one of his funniest and most satirical novels.
• The Ukrainian Army has a helpful video out showing Russian soldiers how to surrender to a drone.
• Mesa, which operates regional jets for American, United, and Delta, faces strong headwinds due to pilot shortages and American ditching them for its wholly-owned regional airline.

Finally, one of my college music professors died this month. Herbert Deutsch co-created the Moog synthesizer and taught at Hofstra University for 40-plus years.

This was the view out my (downtown) office window Friday afternoon:

And this, after 13 straight days of overcast skies, was the view out my (home) office window a few minutes ago:

On the other hand, it's -9°C going up to -4°C...but that trade-off works fine for me.