Canada has put the Prairie Provinces on a winter storm warning as "the worst blizzard in decades" descends upon Saskatchewan and Manitoba:
A winter storm watch is in effect for southern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan, with snowfall accumulations of 30 to 50 centimetres expected mid-week, along with northerly wind gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour, said Environment Canada on Monday.
“Do not plan to travel — this storm has the potential to be the worst blizzard in decades,” the agency warns.
The storm is expected to start Tuesday night, as a Colorado low pressure system moving toward Minnesota will bring a “heavy swath of snow” from southeastern Saskatchewan through most of southern Manitoba.
Snow will start to fall early in the evening near the U.S. border and move north overnight. Blowing snow and high winds will cause zero visibility and whiteout conditions, making driving treacherous.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
And finally, prosecutors in Texas have declined to pursue charges against a 26-year-old woman arrested last week for infanticide after self-inducing an abortion. Welcome to the new 19th Century, at least in the religious South.
Thursday evening, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance:
That's Bill Kurtis, Peter Sagal, Karen Chee, Alonzo Bodden, and Helen Hong at this week's "Wait Wait" taping. The "Not My Job" guest was actor Matt Walsh:
Then yesterday, Cassie and I trundled up to Spiteful Brewing in the sun:
Not a bad few days, in all.
I took Cassie for a 40-minute walk around Lexington's historic district on the way back from Berea:
The light really wasn't great, so I didn't take a lot of photos. Plus Cassie has a way of adding motion blur to every photo I shoot.
Two weeks ago I attended a conference by the Chicago River, which had dye left over from St Patrick's Day. Add a passing fire boat and it's Christmas in March:
Editing photos on my phone doesn't always produce the best results. Faster, cheaper, better, pick two, right? Fortunately I have Adobe Lightroom at home, and deploying software yesterday took a long time.
Here are my re-edits. Better? Worse? At the very least, they're all correctly-proportioned (2x3) instead of whatever I guessed on my little phone screen.
Thursday's sunrise at Nicura Ranch:
Berea College:
One of the ranch's permanent residents:
Down the road from the ranch:
Cinnamon, who rather preferred that I keep Cassie outside the pasture, thank you very much:
I've got a couple more from the past two weeks I'll post after lunch.
Cassie and I are at a lovely ranch in Kentucky where tomorrow she'll meet goats and tonight I've met a 1990s-era Internet connection. Well, I didn't come here to surf the Web, so I'll just deal.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting outside listening to frogs. Lots of frogs. And a hound somewhere down the road.
I'm about 18 hours from taking Cassie on a long road trip, and I have two problems that may cause headaches (one of them literally). First, trees and grasses all over Chicago have started having lots of sex, causing really uncomfortable stuffiness and sinus congestion for me. Second, one of the tires of my car has a slow leak.
The first one will work itself out naturally, with the help of several boxes of tissues. The second one requires a trip to the local tire center, which I'm glad to report is about 200 meters from my house.
Updates as conditions warrant.
We had two incredible performances of Bach's Johannespassion this weekend. (Update: we got a great review!) It's a notoriously difficult work that Bach wrote for his small, amateur church chorus in Leipzig the year he started working there. I can only imagine what rehearsals were like in 1724. I'm also grateful that we didn't include the traditional 90-minute sermon between the 39-minute first part and the 70-minute second part, and that we didn't conclude the work with the equally-traditional pogrom against the Jews of Leipzig.
It's still a magnificent work of music.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world:
Finally, Rachel Feltman lists five myths about Daylight Saving Time. Our annual tradition of questioning it without changing anything will continue, of course.
And it's about 16°C outside, so it's time to take Cassie on her third half-hour walk of the day.
I surprised a colleague by suggesting that it won't get as cold as it did yesterday for the rest of 2022. The temperature bottomed out at -12°C around 6am (with a wind chill of -21°C), a record low. Plus, the climate normal low only goes below freezing until the 20th.
The upshot? I will now take Cassie on a 20-minute walk and enjoy the above-freezing temperatures as long as they last, which is currently forecast through...October?
Even as the East Coast gets bombed by an early-spring cyclone, we have sunny skies and bitter cold. But the -12°C at O'Hare at 6am will likely be the coldest temperature we get in Chicago until 2023. The forecast predicts temperatures above 10°C tomorrow and up to 16°C on Wednesday, with no more below-freezing temperatures predicted as far out as predictions can go.
Meanwhile, I'm about to leave for our first of two Bach Jonannespassion performances this weekend. We still have tickets available for tomorrow's, so come on down!
I'm hard at work on a presentation for my company's annual Tech Forum, which is next week. Meanwhile I've got two performances of Bach's Johannespassion this weekend, with our orchestra rehearsal this evening. Oh, and we change the clocks on Sunday.
So in lieu of anything more interesting, here's a photo I took of Chicago's St Boniface Cemetery on Tuesday morning:
