The Daily Parker

Talk-show host Stephen Colbert has set up a website called Better Know a Ballot where you can check on the voting requirements for your state. He's producing videos for each state (starting with North Carolina) to explain the rules.

That's the bright spot of joy for you today. Here are other...spots...of something:

• The president answered questions from "undecided" voters at a town hall on Tuesday, and naturally lied almost every time he spoke. The Washington Post lists his most egregious falsehoods.
• Charlie Pierce believes the administration "couldn't have screwed up the response to the pandemic worse if it sent out battalions of the infected to sneeze on people."
• Attorney General William Barr attacked his own federal prosecutors in a speech yesterday, saying career attorneys have too much power that should go to the political appointees.
• Greg Sargent lists 7 ways the administration is "using government to corrupt the election."
• Megan McArdle explains how the language of Fox differs from English.
• The BBC's Reality Check takes on the president's unique understanding of forestry.
• Here in Chicago, the 98-year-old bar Southport Lanes will close for good on September 27th.
• I hope they didn't use Fortune Food Product's ingredients in their food, because the FDA has ordered them to stop production "after federal inspectors allegedly witnessed live rodents and other food safety violations at the East Pilsen facility."
• On this day in 1934, Lane Tech High School opened at its current location in North Center. At the time, it was the largest high school in the world, with 7,000 (all male) students.

OK, one more bit of good news: The Economist reported this week that the southern hemisphere had almost no flu cases this winter, because pandemic response measures work on influenza just as they work on Covid-19.

Just a few of the things that crossed my desktop this morning:

• Astronomers have detected phosphine gas in the clouds on Venus, which is a strong indicator of life.
• Astronomers have also detected a ping-pong-ball-sized black hole orbiting the sun, getting as close as 133 kAUs in its orbit.
• An aircraft made a precautionary landing on an Interstate in Tennessee, and got a full police escort on take-off. No one was hurt.
• Car manufacturers are teaming up with insurance companies to share data on almost every aspect of how you drive.
• The Democratic governor of Nevada slammed the president for holding a "reckless and selfish" rally inside a Las Vegas arena over the weekend.
• Disappointed would-be marijuana retailers have sued to get some of the remaining Illinois licenses, saying the process as run has created an oligopoly that harms consumers.
• Via pro photographer Scott Kelly, Iain Stanley explains why your camera equipment matters less than you think.
• There are currently 8 active tropical systems in the Western hemisphere today, including the 21st storm of the Atlantic season.

And last night, Cubs pitcher Alec Mills threw the club's 16th no-hitter against the Milwaukee Brewers. In the history of Major League Baseball, there have only been 315 no-hitters. The last time the Cubs won a no-hitter was 51 years ago.

I've had an unusually busy (and productive!) day, so naturally, the evening reading has piled up:

• Adam Weinstein says the president "is the military-industrial complex", explaining something of his effect on active-duty military personnel.
• Ivan Krastev explains why the pandemic has not helped authoritarians as one might think it would. (Hint: authoritarians usually "solve" problems that they have created themselves.)
• Ed Yong thinks "America is trapped in a pandemic spiral."
• Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, closed after the August 10th derecho, reopened yesterday.
• Will Senate Democrats end the filibuster if the GOP blocks all our legislation next session?
• The City of Chicago will, we think, maybe, someday, start replacing lead water pipes. (This is why I use a filter.)
• The Chicago Transit Authority has a new tool to help riders avoid crowded buses and trains.

Finally, National Geographic has a slideshow of the world's best ghost towns.

This is the view from Half Moon Bay, Calif., not far from the CZU Lightning Complex Fire, at 9am this morning:

Update: The same reader sent this photo from noon PDT:

Fires continue to burn all over the state despite some modest cooling from this weekend's record temperatures. The California Air Resources Board notes that the increased frequency and severity of these fires, like the increased frequency and severity of other weather-related incidents, comes directly from climate change.

The image seems eerily familiar to us sci-fi fans:

Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountains have a completely different set of weather problems today:

Across parts of the northern and the central Rockies, including Denver, some 6 million people were under winter alerts Tuesday. Across this region, 100 to 200 mm of snow could fall, with locally higher amounts of 300 to 450 mm at the highest elevations through Wednesday. As the day broke, snow was already falling across parts of Idaho, Utah and Wyoming and moving into northern Colorado. By midmorning Tuesday, the snow was expected to spread across Colorado and last through Wednesday morning.

Winter hadn't just arrived through precipitation: Temperatures 17–22°C below average were forecast to lead to numerous records Tuesday and Wednesday.

Lows were forecast to dip below -10°C with wind chills [well below that], with highs that will struggle to get [above freezing] for several locations from the Rockies to parts of the Plains.

On Saturday, [Denver] hit 39°C. Not only was that a daily record high, But it also set an all-time hottest temperature record for the month of September in the city, and it was the furthest into September the city had ever hit 38°C. The previous record was 36.5°C, set last September.

On Monday, Denver hit a high of 34°C, making it the 73rd day in 2020 to exceed 32°C. That tied the all-time record of 73 days set in 2012.

Just 12 hours later, Denver was nearly 34°C colder Tuesday morning, with light snow beginning to fall around the area.

So, in three days, Denver went from a record-shattering 39°C to one of its earliest snowfalls on record.

This year just continues to get weirder.

Yesterday, Woodland Hills, Calf., a neighborhood in Los Angeles, recorded its hottest temperature ever:

As a historic heat wave left Southern California broiling, Woodland Hills on Sunday recorded an all-time high of 49.4°C, which the National Weather Service said was the hottest temperature recorded at an official weather station in Los Angeles County.

It broke the old record of 48.3°C set in July of 2006 and was one of several records to fall on Sunday. The NWS said Riverside hit its highest temperature ever for September at 47.2°C; Santa Ana hit a record high for the day at 41.1°C.

Meanwhile, up the coast in the Bay Area, San Francisco (!) topped out at 38.9°C—a little warmer than the 14°C they recorded Saturday morning—and even Half Moon Bay, right on the coast, hit 32°C, which almost never happens. (It's back down to 20°C there right now.)

In case you're wondering, Death Valley hit a cool 50°C around noon yesterday before dropping off to 36°C overnight.

I woke up this morning to a beautiful early-autumn morning: 16°C, low humidity, clear skies, and a gentle breeze. Parker celebrated by eating a live cicada, which made the mistake of buzzing when he sniffed it.

My plan today? Starting as close to 9:09 am as practical, I'm going to walk up to Lake Bluff, about 42 km. Full report when I recover.

The Chicago Tribune's Frank Wachowski concurs with the Daily Parker: 2020 was the warmest summer in Chicago history:

To be sure, there have been many summers with hotter individual temperatures (2012, 1995, 1988 come to mind) but the warmth this summer has been persistent, especially at night where many warm overnight low temperatures have been observed. 

But when you average out all the high and low temperatures this summer since June 1, the 24.8°C degree average temperature for 2020 just edges out 1955’s record of 24.6°C degrees for top honors. Summer 2020 also finishes 2.7°C degrees above the normal average.  

What’s more, there have been 31 days at or above 32°C at O’Hare this year to date, while the “normal” number of 32°C or higher temps in a year here is just 17, meaning we recorded 182 percent as many over-32°C as normal.  

Today, the first day of meteorological autumn, will be cool and damp, as befits fall.

Oh, and let's not forget, August saw the 8th consecutive month of record-high water levels on Lakes Michigan and Huron:

With today's high temperature at O'Hare (29°C) coming in slightly above forecast—as it has almost every day this week—I can now state with confidence that 2020's was the hottest summer ever in Chicago. By my figures, we hit an average daily temperature of 24.8°C, 0.2°C above the record set in 1955.

The string of 6 days above 32°C from the 23rd to the 28th put us over the top, so that even the weekend's milder temperatures couldn't bring us back under the line.

Congratulations?

Oh, and this is the blog's 7,501st post since May 1998. Look for the 8,000th next July.

Today is the last day of meteorological summer, and by my math we really have had the warmest summer ever in Chicago. (More on that tomorrow, when it's official.) So I, for one, am happy to see it go.

And yet, so many things of note happened just in the last 24 hours:

• Greg Sargent says the president's "vile tweetstorm" yesterday "reveals the ugly core of his 'law and order' campaign."
• On that point, lawyer Nick Carmody suggests that the civil unrest the president has fomented "is one of the greatest sources of narcissistic supply."
• Pediatrician Rhea Boyd warns that when police commit violence, children are watching.
• United Airlines has ditched its change fees for domestic tickets, but as Cranky Flier explains, another policy change may actually hurt customers who change flights.
• Hurricane Laura destroyed the Lake Charles, La., NWS doppler radar, around the time the weather station there recorded a 221 km/h gust.
• Wells Fargo has filed one of the largest foreclosure suits in Chicago history, to try recovering a $338 million debt that the owner of the Palmer House Hilton has not serviced since April.

Finally, Josh Marshall reminds everyone that Democrats are nervous about the upcoming election because we're Democrats. It's kind of in our blood.

As of Saturday, it looked like we might break the record for hottest summer ever (average daily temperature 24.7°C) in Chicago, set way back in 1955. If the today's forecast holds, however, we will merely tie the record.

This is actually a good-news, bad-news thing. The good news is: (a) we came just a bit short of breaking the record (36.7°C) for August 26th, and (b) a cold front will push through tomorrow evening, dropping temperatures into the high 20s for the weekend.

You know? I'm OK with not breaking the record. It's 33°C at O'Hare and 32°C at my house right now, and that ignores the 21°C dewpoint that makes even light clothes cleve after walking just a few steps outside. And my electric company sent me an email this morning warning I'm about to have a higher-than-expected electric bill.

Roll on October.