I mentioned our weather today? Here's my polling place a little while ago:
OK, time to stop blogging and get back to work. After I walk the dog again. (It's up to 22°C already. We don't get many days like this in Chicago, especially in November.)
Yesterday Chicago broke its all-time one-day rainfall record of 165 mm (set 14 August 1987) with 168 mm recorded at O'Hare:
And it's still falling:
Here's the Tribune story:
After the rainiest day in recorded Chicago history, residents across the area faced more storms, closed roads and flooded basements Sunday as the remnants of Hurricane Ike were expected to arrive.
Saturday's rainfall, as measured at O'Hare International Airport, was at least 6.63 inches, breaking the city calendar-day record of 6.49 on Aug. 14, 1987. Records have been kept since 1871.
The storm, which was blamed for at least one death, also clogged dozens of roads and stranded motorists from Evanston to Schaumburg to Naperville. The Edens Expressway was closed for hours, and access to O'Hare blocked by both road and train.
An additional 2 to 4 inches of rain are forecast, compounding the damage to a waterlogged region where record flood levels are expected along the Des Plaines River. Prospect Heights officials declared a state of emergency, and Riverside residents were put on alert for possible evacuation as the river rose. Water also edged higher on the Chicago and Fox Rivers.
My just-bathed dog now smells like a clean, wet dog instead of just a clean dog. And it keeps coming down.
The Cubs' magic number remains 11 (with 15 games left), only because the Brewers were also rained out tonight.
I hope Ike doesn't hit Houston too hard tonight, and I think I'm joining all of Houston—Astros fans or not—wishing the storm had gone somewhere else.
American Airlines called me and said they're not flying to Houston this weekend, and would I like a refund? (This sort of thing is why I love American.) So, no Cubs game after all. I just hope Houston is still there when I continue the 30-Park Geas next season:
Update, 22:00 CDT: MLB.com has the story, including the back-story, about the league cancelling Friday's and Saturday's games.
The NHC hasn't wavered much on Ike's projected path: Houston is now officially under a hurricane watch.
Even American Airlines thinks I'm not going to a Cubs game this weekend. But as my cousin said, "They can't lose if they can't play."
I have tickets to see the Cubs play Houston this Saturday—in Houston. This graphic just released from the National Hurricane Center suggests that even though Minute Maid Park has a roof, the game might still be rained out:
(For those of you without a handy map of Texas, Houston is just about where the "2" is in the phrase "2 PM Sat.")
At the moment, Ike is expected to make landfall just around the time my plane is supposed to land, just about where my plane is supposed to land, as a Category 1 or 2 hurricane with 95 kt winds.
Crap. I'll be watching this only slightly less than I'll be watching Friday's weather, if only because my life depends on Friday's weather and not on Saturday's.
Update: At least I would get a refund on my airfare if the hurricane hits.
Living in a temperate climate means everything changes constantly. But there are rhythms. Things change fastest in late August and early March, for example: the sun set after 8pm from early May until just three weeks ago, but last night, the sun set at 7:30; in two and a half weeks it sets at 7; three weeks after that, at 6:30.
So what prompted this nearly-inane observation? The insects. It's late evening and my windows are all open, so I can hear thousands of cicadas, grasshoppers, crickets—yes, even in the center of Chicago. And the spiders have come out by the hundreds, anywhere they can get two anchors and a cross-beam. While Parker and I sat at Ranalli's on Monday, two of them spun webs side by side in alternating gaps in the patio fence; there are four new webs on our back staircase in the last week.
To everything there is a season, at least above the 30th parallel.
No, not me; Gustav. The National Hurricane Center forecasts the storm pointing straight at the Louisiana coast by this time Monday. True, six days out the error bars are pretty far apart, but New Orleans is right in the center of them.
Parker and I checked out the annual festival in Boystown, and lasted 45 minutes before both of us suffered serious crowd fatigue. The walk did both of us some good, though my sunscreen, nowhere nearly as effective as the natural stuff he sheds all over the place, seems not to have lasted, so I'll definitely feel the walk longer than he will.
Crowds, though. My goodness. The weather was perfect today—I mean, perfect—so the entire city squeezed itself into four blocks of Halsted Street. Parker got his tail trod upon twice, patted on the head by perhaps a hundred people, and looked at me on the walk home as if to say, "how much farther to Bataan?" Poor guy.
Also, I finished Small Gods, a literary amuse guele before tackling Howard Zinn's People's History of the U.S..