Ten days until I get a couple days off...
The FAA facility handing arrivals and departures for Chicago's two main airports shut down earlier today:
The FAA started issuing revised flight departure times to airlines Tuesday afternoon after an approximately two-hour “ground stop’’ halted all flights to and from Chicago’s two airports because of smoke in an air traffic radar facility serving northeastern Illinois, airline officials said.
The ground stop was ordered as FAA workers were evacuated from the radar facility and operations transferred to the FAA's Chicago Center in Aurora, which usually handles just high-altitude traffic.
The smoke was traced to a faulty ventilation motor and the workers were allowed back into the facility around 1 p.m.
No planes were imperiled by the outage. The Chicago Center facility has no trouble handling arrivals for an hour or two.
The Chicago Tribune has an infographic this weekend with the final statistics of the past winter. After defining the "cold season" as the "period from the first freeze of the fall to the last freeze of spring," and asserting we've had our last freeze (I'll let that float for now), then the 2013-14 winter looked like this:
| Measurement |
Value |
|
First freeze
|
Oct 22nd (-2°C)
|
|
Last freeze
|
Apr 16th (-4°C)
|
|
Days below freezing
|
76 (Nov through Mar)
|
|
Days below -18°C
|
26 (Dec through Mar)
|
|
Total snowfall
|
2,082 mm
|
It would have been helpful, I think, had they included some comparison data. It still encapsulates a really crappy winter, which now, finally, seems over.
At 1pm, the official temperature at O'Hare was 28°C. It has not been this warm in Chicago since November 7th, six months ago. The last time we had weather warmer than that was September 28th (29°C).
Good thing I'm inside...working...
Update: The official 2pm temperature of 30°C has not occurred in Chicago since September 11th, 239 days ago.
Chicagoist graphically demonstrates why I don't want to live where I do anymore:
The explanation:
Chicago has several major douche vortexes. It’s important to map them out because many innocent people stumble onto them by accident. Recent Chicago transplants and tourists are the most common victims. They’re drawn in by some of the traps in the vortices, which range from hip bars to music venues, and then they find themselves stuck in a zombie-like horde of belligerent drunks.
The douches are many. And they are easy enough to stereotype - they tend to be veterans of the Greek systems in Big Ten schools, and they like to wear popped polo shirts and Cubs hats. But really anyone can be a douche. It just takes this simple formula:
Money + Large Amounts of Alcohol + Total Disrespect For Other People’s Boundaries = Douche Vortex
They've even got an interactive map if you want more details.
Today is May Day, but it feels like mid-March. Instead of the normal 18°C for May 1st, we're going to get, if we're lukcy, 9°C, with some gray skies and drizzle to drive the point home.
The WGN Weather Center has more:
A sprinkly, damp chill hung over Chicago as April 2014 closed overnight. The month finished 0.2°C below normal—a fraction of the deficit that’s been recorded in a number of recent months.
The shortfall, small as it is, means April goes down in the record books here as the 6th consecutive month with an average temperature cooler than normal.
The 12°C high with which the month closed Wednesday was coolest final day of April in 18 years. That reading was, in marked contrast, a full 18°C cooler than the 29°C high recorded on April 30th a year ago.
Chicago’s cloud cover has been extensive over all four days that the area’s weather pattern has been under the influence of the most recent mammoth spring storm. Sunshine during that period has amounted to a paltry 16%–less than a third normal. Historically, Aprils have produced 52% of their possible sun.
One of the coldest winters in history has given way to one of the dreariest springs in recent memory. No wonder so many people want to leave Illinois.
At least it should be warmer next week.
Today wasn't nearly as pretty:
If so, these are queued up:
More later...
I didn't post a lot yesterday because (a) I had tons to do for work and (b) once I'd finished, I had to go out into this:
It got all the way up to 21°C, briefly, and there were actual leaves on the trees for the first time since November.
Today it's sunny and 7°C. It might get up to 14°C sometime this coming week, once it stops raining.
Hey, at least it's spring.