After 31 days of snow cover, 40 days without a temperature above 10°C, 67 days without four consecutive days above 5°C, and not one night above freezing since December 29th, Chicago is finally, finally getting warmer weather:
Warming in coming days—a slow process at first—leads to a 50-degree [Fahrenheit] temperature increase by Saturday afternoon. The day may produce the first 50-degree high here since late December.
(Skilling wrote that around 11pm CST yesterday when the temperature was heading down to its overnight low of -19°C.)
Here's the National Weather Service temperature plot for the next 48 hours, predicting a rise from -9°C up to 7°C by noon Saturday:
I really can't wait. Really. I'm wearing long johns under my suit right now, which is just plain wrong.
Update, 3:25pm CST: Ahhh. The temperature has already risen 15°C in the past 12 hours.
Western Europe also. The snowfall has paralyzed (paralysed?) the entire country:
South-east England has the worst snow it has seen for 18 years, causing all London buses to be pulled from service and the closure of Heathrow's runways.
The Met Office has issued an extreme weather warning for England, Wales and parts of eastern Scotland.
Up to four inches is forecast to fall later on Monday in south-east England, and up to 12 inches in the north-east. Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "We are doing everything in our power to ensure services, road, rail and airports are open as quickly as possible, and we are continuing to monitor this throughout the day."
(After which Conservative Party leader David Cameron asked if Brown still believes that the freeze-thaw cycle has ended.)
All of my colleages at my client's office in Chicago—where we've had snow on the ground without interruption all year—wonder what the fuss is about. The visiting Londoners reminded us that the UK probably has fewer snowplows than a typical Chicago ward, and complained that the one snow day they're likely to see all year doesn't affect them (the client's London office is closed today).
In unrelated news, the cheeky rodent came out wearing sunglasses today, so if woodchucks are any good at predicting the weather, we'll have another 6 weeks of snow on the ground. (Malverne Mel, on Long Island, did not see his shadow. The cognoscenti know Mel's a better forecaster.)
Update: Le Monde has photos from Paris and Madrid.
Even though it's finally above freezing at the moment in Chicago, we did make it through the entire month of January without having a single above-freezing night. It has been the coldest January in 24 years, and it looks like mid-February we'll see some more. Enough already.
The US Geological Survey just reported a 4.5-magnitude earthquake in downtown Seattle, where the time is about 6:15 am. That'll wake you up. No damage or injuries reported yet—it was a minor earthquake—but still, what a way to start the day.
Yesterday was the 30th consecutive day below freezing in Chicago. The chart doesn't show that we've had only 10 hours above freezing all year. The last time we had 24 hours above freezing was December 27th.
One little bit of good news: Today the sun sets after 5pm for the first time since October, as each day becomes noticably longer than the one before.
Roll on April...
The Chicago Tribune can turn off its clock; Chicago officially hit -17°C a few minutes ago.
The Chicago Tribune's home page this morning has this counter, which as a native Chicagoan I have to call pretty whiny:
Yes, it's colder right now in Chicago than at the North Pole, and yes, we've only had 44 days in the last 139 years when the temperature failed to go above -17°C, but this counter just seems silly. And it's so short-lived: we'll be out of the danger zone by noon today.
Now, a counter ticking down the 4 days, 4 hours, and 1 minute until Barack Obama is sworn in as President? Not silly at all.
And Crain's had a story this morning to warm my heart: Goose Island Beer is now available in Washington, just in time for a Chicagoan President to drink it.
The other-worldly cold that parked over Alaska at the end of December has now schlumped down to Chicago. For the first time since 3 February 1996, we've got more than 24 consecutive hours of temperatures below -18°C—officially bottoming out at -23°C overnight at O'Hare. (This is nowhere near the record set 15 January 1972 of -33°C.)
<humor tone="gentle">
You know, between this weather and their annoying governor, I'm wondering about whether we should have admitted the state in 1959....
</humor>
The frigid weather in Alaska (ten consecutive days below -40°C) has apparently broken. Yesterday, for the first time since December 27th, Fairbanks got above -20°C. Right now it's a balmy -17°C, in fact, which is out of the realm of truly-dangerous cold and into just-plain-annoying cold.
...just left $153 million on the table:
Chicago and CTA officials have only themselves to blame for forfeiting a $153 million federal grant pegged to help ease traffic gridlock, U.S. transportation officials said Thursday.
The fumble marks a major setback in efforts to improve mobility in the nation's second most congested region. It means Chicago will be forced to put on hold a promising plan that would use bus-only lanes, special quick-boarding stations and high-tech traffic signals until city officials can try for funding from Barack Obama's administration.
Mayor Richard Daley insisted his administration was not responsible for the loss of the $153 million. "We did everything possible," Daley said at an event with CTA officials. He accused federal officials of being inflexible by refusing to extend a deadline to meet the requirements of the grant, which was considered a shoo-in since last spring when U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters signed an agreement with the mayor.
...
"Chicago waited too long to get their application submitted in full," said Doug Hecox, a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration.
One of the fundamental omissions was that city and CTA officials failed to conduct an adequate number of public meetings, officials said.
The grant was contingent on the city's 2008 approval of congestion-pricing for parking meters, the lease of its parking meter system and related requirements.
At least it's warmer here than in Alaska, where some areas haven't had temperatures above -35°C in more than a week. (It's -50°C in Northway right now, for instance.)