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We got 220 mm (8.6 in) of snow at O'Hare by 6am today, which means the storm dumped more on us than on any November day in history (earlier reported as the worst in almost 10 years): As of 6 p.m., 6.9 inches (175 mm) of snow had fallen at O’Hare and 5.5 (140 mm) at Midway, making it the heaviest single-day snowfall since Nov. 21 2015, when 7 inches fell at O’Hare, according to the National Weather Service. O’Hare had been predicting its busiest Thanksgiving week ever, despite the FAA recently lifting...

It's nice when you can plan for severe weather. It's snowed nearly all day, lightly at first but turning a lot worse after noon. Since the temperature has stayed right around -1°C it wasn't a problem to give Cassie some off-leash time at the local park: She even made new friends: And you'd think after 9 hours of snowfall, my rain gauge might have registered some precipitation. I wonder what the trouble could be? As of noon we had 76 mm of snow officially at O'Hare. I expect it'll be more than double...

Cassie and I hauled out to Far Suburbistan and met friends (one dog, one human) for a 4.7-km walk around the St James Farm Forest Preserve: Because I wanted to get groceries ahead of tomorrow's snowfall, poor Cassie had to suffer in the car for about 3 hours. Don't feel bad: my friend had tons of leftovers from yesterday, so Cassie got enough turkey to last her until dinner next Thursday. She's now plotzed on the couch. She doesn't know it yet, but we're about to go for another walk. My 77-day streak of...

Cassie and I have gotten a couple of decent walks today, with a very long walk planned for tomorrow, because this is on the menu for late tomorrow night: The National Weather Service predicts a 70% chance of us getting 150 mm (6 in) of snow or more. Whee. Cassie will enjoy it, though.

Not a whole lot going on today. Early departure from work, four days off, lots of couch time and walkies with Cassie, and oh my god what is that thing heading towards us: Yeah, looks like we might get some snow on Saturday. But since we know that on Tuesday, we'll adapt. Also, the A-Ring A-Hole is a dork.

First, just a reminder: anthropogenic climate change (aka global warming) will not wipe out humanity; but it will lead to millions of deaths, plus immense costs and disruptions, which the next few generations will bear. And we could have prevented it. Another reminder: despite what this map shows, as soon as the first real cold of the 2025-26 winter hits after Thanksgiving, lots of people will say "this disproves global warming." No, climate theory predicts weather extremes with the average temperature...

It feels like we have way more color today than we usually have this late in November: The short-term climate forecast calls for below-freezing temperatures for most of next week, so I expect even the last remaining maple holdouts will drop the rest of their leaves pretty soon. I'll enjoy this for now, though.

Cassie and I took a stroll through the local park. The maples are holding onto their leaves like winter will never come—though they seem to have given up on the chlorophyll for now: Mid-November light is about the equivalent of the end of January, peaking around 29½° above the southern horizon at noon. That gives us hours of low, warm light on days like today. Also, after walking about 32 km in total yesterday, I had no aching desire to walk at my usual pace, and Cassie didn't either.  

My Brews & Choos buddy and I repeated our walk from 2023 along the North Branch Trail to Barnaby's of Northbook because they have really great pizza. This time we skipped all detours and went straight up from the trail to the restaurant, thereby saving over an hour of walking and, therefore, getting pizza sooner. It helped that Chicago tied the record high temperature yesterday, hitting 21.7°C (71°F) between 2 and 3 pm. We started with cool and gloomy weather that got progressively better throughout the...

We get pretty sunsets this time of year:

We had a blast of lake-effect snow yesterday. This happens when cold air passes over a warm lake, pulling huge volumes of moisture from the water and freezing it into snow. The air got quite a bit below freezing yesterday morning, so the northeast winds picked up a lot of vapor from the 8°C water, which it promptly dropped on the city. Through the spring and early summer we often hear that it's "cooler by the lake." But like the idea of "global warming," that hides a lot of nuance in a simple phrase. A...

Before I get to the best form of public transit available in the US, let's everyone say hello to my sister's dog, Omen: Omen is a whippet. Good. (She's quite devo-ted to him.) Anyway, this is how I got from the BART to the start of my 5.5 kilometer walk on Saturday: If you take the Powell and Hyde line, the best part comes at the corner of Hyde and Lombard, at the top of Russian Hill. Just look at this view, and imagine seeing Alcatraz, Angel Island, and Tiburon directly ahead! (I have seen them from...

As threatened yesterday, we got a few rounds of lake-effect snow overnight and this morning. Since not all the leaves have fallen yet, it still looks pretty: And of course, one member of my household really, really, really likes a fresh snowfall: Right now we've got about 100 mm on the ground. That will melt quickly as the forecast calls for above-freezing temperatures from tomorrow morning onward, reaching possibly 18°C on Saturday. I hope so, because I've got a 20 km hike planned for the day, and I'd...

I don't enjoy taking 6 am flights, of course, but they do have advantages. I left my hotel at 6:11 am and was through SFO security by 6:25. That's even faster than last year! I'm a little less enthused about this, however: URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE National Weather Service Chicago IL 224 AM CST Sun Nov 9 2025 Northern Cook-Central Cook-Southern Cook-Eastern Will- Including the cities of Chicago, Peotone, Northbrook, Crete, Evanston, Lemont, Park Forest, Schaumburg, Cicero, Oak Park, La Grange, Des...

I made it to the Bay Area, and I'm about to fall asleep. Tomorrow I've got plans in both San Francisco and San Jose, which, if you care to glimpse a map, are nowhere near each other. (Seriously, they're farther apart than Chicago and Milwaukee.) Fortunately they have trains here. Right, well, I'm off then. Assuming I don't get re-routed involuntarily, I should be home mid-afternoon Sunday, and assuming meteorologists know what they're doing, I will be rewarded for schlepping a heavy coat all over the...

A warm and dry October has given us unusually late fall colors this year. They seem close to peak intensity this week, at least in my local park. Enjoy:

With the unusually late colors we have this autumn against the much earlier sunsets that started yesterday (before 4:30 pm from November 15th to December 31st, ugh!), things have remained tolerable. It will snow eventually; we'll have a freeze eventually; but for now, I'll just enjoy it. I didn't enjoy these things, though: Humans formed governments in the first place to feed people; the OAFPOTUS and his village of idiots have failed at that basic task. Architects who have looked at the paltry plans and...

It's late October, so the days are shorter. Then on Sunday, we get an extra hour of sleep at the cost of an hour of afternoon daylight. Which is all to say I ran out of time today doing actual work and taking meetings at odd times because the UK switched their clocks yesterday. And now I have to walk two dogs, feed two dogs, and run to rehearsal. More tomorrow.

I took the dramatic beagle and Cassie to Spiteful* yesterday afternoon. Butters got more pats than Cassie did. Perhaps it's this face? This afternoon we took a half-hour walk through the local park because the weather is absolutely perfect. Whenever I stopped to try to photograph the two dogs, they immediately went in separate directions, so this is the best I could do: The girls are now sunning themselves on my front porch, I'm up in my office coding away, and I've got chicken soup going in the slow...

We've had a fairly warm autumn so far, but this morning we got a nearly-normal temperature at O'Hare and the coldest temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ since April 27th. O'Hare saw 5°C this morning, a scoche below the normal October 20th low of 6.7°C. We're also starting to get fall colors. I've been watching a locust tree down the block, and I'll have some photos of its progress later this week.

I thoroughly enjoyed our performance yesterday. After the No Kings demonstration, between the dress rehearsal and the concert, and well before the rain hit, Millennium Park looked pretty nice: After the concert, I did not enjoy the rainstorm that greeted us when we walked over to the place where we had our post-concert drinks and snacks. I got home well after midnight, which fortunately Cassie didn't mind because she was at sleepaway camp.  Cassie, now home, seems to be recovering from the trauma pretty...

I spent about 6 hours today making dozens of performance and stability updates to the Inner Drive Extensible Architecture and the Inner Drive Gazetteer (which provides geographical services for Weather Now). Cassie spent about that much time outside, including Riding In The Car!, which she also loves. Tomorrow I should have some more interesting things to say about how I did about 40 separate refactorings in just a few hours. Hint: Chat GPT 5 and 5-mini. Sometimes they were laughably wrong, but about...

So many things passed through my inbox in the last day and a half: The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that an assistant to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was observed over the weekend discussing plans over Signal with an aide to Reichsminister Stephen Miller to send the 82nd Airborne to Portland. Paul Krugman breaks from his usual economics beat to lambast the OAFPOTUS and his Reichskabinett der Nationalen Rettung for the horrifying ICE raid* on a Chicago apartment building last week: "What do we learn...

I spent yesterday afternoon reading and relaxing with Cassie. As we had near-record warmth (31°C at O'Hare, 28°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ), we spent the day mostly outside. The highlight for Cassie may have been the woman who gave her a couple of fries before her partner and toddler arrived. Cassie's lowlight might have been unsuccessfully trying to psychically will the toddler to toss a couple of fries in her direction: Back home, I've inadvertently taken in a boarder. This orb weaver has been...

This was a lot of fun and a lot of work: This was my fifth full marathon walk: According to my watch, it was also the least draining, judging by my body battery score this morning: For comparison, here are the previous two years: This year, I rested a bit more, and more aggressively managed my heart rate. I also got a lot of good sleep earlier in the week. However, as this year was considerably warmer than last year, these mitigations meant it took a bit longer. Oddly, it was slightly cooler in 2023...

I had a long day of debugging today, and I'm about to go to Cassie's doggie daycare the way I got here: on a Divvy e-bike. They cruise at 31 km/h and cost only $2 more than the train for my commute. Plus, I get some aerobic exercise. The forecast calls for summer-like weather through the next few weeks, except for a 3-day cooldown next week, so I'll keep pedaling. And yes, I wore a helmet. Tomorrow: my 5th marathon walk—in 30°C weather.

The two biggest news stories of the past 24 hours are the government shutting down because Congress couldn't pass a spending bill by the end of fiscal year last night, and the pathetic attempted-fascist assembly of the United States' general and flag officers in Virginia yesterday. We'll take the dumber one first: Jennifer Rubin shakes her head in sadness, but not surprise. Matthew Yglesias has 17 thoughts about the shutdown, and Brian Beutler has 20, but how many thoughts does Rabbi Eliezer have? And...

Tomorrow is, quite unexpectedly, October. Though the official temperature at O'Hare has not hit 32°C since August 16th, our weather has remained stubbornly summer-like. The 16-day forecast suggests the weather will continue as far as the model can predict, and may see 32°C as early as this weekend. That will make my Friday plans a bit more challenging as my Brews & Choos buddy has gotten over Covid and we're all set to walk to Lake Bluff then. For my part, I am experiencing a very rare side effect of...

How is it October in two days? As in, how is it already a full month into autumn and O'Hare is reporting a higher temperature than Phoenix? Meanwhile: Incumbent New York City mayor Eric Adams has dropped his re-election bid as polling reveals that most of the city actively despises him. Josh Marshall shrugs, but runs the numbers on a possible victory by former governor Andrew Cuomo. Paul Krugman warns that the Republican spending bill the Democrats are currently blocking in the Senate would cause...

As planned, Cassie and I walked a lot yesterday: 13 km total, in 2¼ hours. The temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ got up to 26.9°C, and 30.6°C officially at O'Hare; i.e., a warm, July day, except for the sun setting just past 6:30 pm. As good as yesterday was for me, and however great it was for you, I guarantee Cassie's day was better. Did you get to splash in a kiddie pool? By the time we'd walked 11½ kilometers, and plopped ourselves at Spiteful Brewing, Cassie did what she always does after...

Cassie and I are about to spend the next 8 or so hours outside. The official temperature at O'Hare hit 29.4°C (85°F) a few minutes ago, and it's 25.8°C (78.4°F) at Inner Drive Technology World HQ. Just for comparison, the normal high temperature from July 11th to July 17th is 29.3°C. We're in no danger of setting a record high temperature today—that was 33°C set in 1971—but yes, I can tell you it feels like July, just with a lower dewpoint (12.2°C at O'Hare, compared with an average of 20.8°C this past...

I'm doing a lot of work today, and I don't want to waste my flow. That said, it's 23°C with clear skies. Maybe I can knock off at 4 and take Cassie on another long walk? Speaking of, my Brews & Choos buddy planned to come with me on my 42.2-km walk today, but she tested positive for Covid on Tuesday. (She does Ironman races; a marathon-length walk is practically a recovery activity for her.) So we're going next Friday. We hope it's cooler by then.

The stupidest person ever to sit behind the Resolute Desk has made most of the world feel sad for us. Let's check on why: Matthew Yglesias digs into the abject idiocy of the OAFPOTUS's war on Tylenol. Jeff Maurer puts on his OAFPOTUS mask and declaims "Tylenol is why I'm like this." And yet, both Jennifer Rubin and Josh Marshall see the tide turning hard against the administration, though George Packer thinks we now live in an authoritarian state. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called an...

The Inner Drive Technology World HQ weather station actually comprises four Netatmo components: an indoor base station, and outdoor station, a rain gauge, and an anemometer. The outdoor station lives in a white birdhouse in a shaded area on the east side of my house, the rain gauge is in a vertically-unobstructed corner of my west-side deck, and the indoor station is between the two so they're both comfortably within range. At the moment, the anemometer is on the floor of the west deck and doesn't get a...

After waking up, turning on a bunch of lights, and throwing on clothes, I opened my front door and indicated to Cassie that she should go to the little patch of grass just outside and do her morning job. She pranced out the door, stopped, turned around, and walked right back inside. This is why: I'm hoping it subsides enough to take her at least to the street before too long. One forecast thinks it'll end by 10am but the National Weather Service thinks it may just get slightly less stormy by then. I...

I just got back from a 30-minute walk with Cassie in 22°C early-autumn sun. We suffered. And now I'm back in my home office and she's back on the couch. She will spend the next several hours napping in a cool, breezy spot downstairs, and I will...work. I will also read a bit, which is a skill that I'm glad Cassie does not have after encountering the day's news: It's official! The June jobs report showed a decline in US employment for the first time since December 2020, making President Biden the only...

As I mentioned in previous posts, Cassie got not one but two long walks over the weekend. On Friday we did a 5½ km loop around the neighborhood and wound up at Begyle for one beer (or a handful of liver treats, depending on species). And yesterday we drove out to Morton Arboretum and did a winding 8½ km loop with Cassie's friend Kelsey. Pity about the weather: Today's weather is about the same, but alas Cassie and I have only gotten 45 minutes of walkies so far. Between work and the first chorus...

A total lunar eclipse has just started and will reach totality at 12:30 Chicago time, which is unfortunately about 10 hours too early for us to enjoy it here. It's a good way to end the first day of meteorological autumn, though, as is the 8 km walk Cassie and I have planned around 2 this afternoon. With a forecast high of 19°C, it should be lovely. In other eclipses this past week: The OAFPOTUS has so badly damaged US foreign policy and our standing in the world that China has eclipsed us as the de...

Almost as forecast, the temperature last night went down to 11.4°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ and 8.9°C at O'Hare, in both cases the coolest since June 2nd and June 1st, respectively. That gets my house to a very comfortable sleeping temperature. The next few nights should continue the trend. Also, it's been exactly* five years since I set out on my first marathon walk. Tomorrow might have turned out to be a really good day to repeat the effort, but I have a lot to do and I'm having a birthday dinner...

The temperature at Inner Drive World HQ bottomed out at 14.6°C at 6:35 this morning. It was last this cool on June 5th at 8:18 CDT, just under 81 days ago. I like summer, I really do. And I recognize that the overnight low at O'Hare this morning (12.8°C) was a bit below normal for August 25th (17.8°C). Still, I didn't sleep with the windows open for 22 days, which may be a (summer) record. That's too long. The next few days should remain unseasonably (but delightfully) cool before it gets warm again...

We had our coldest morning since February 17th today, cold enough that Cassie didn't want to linger sniffing her favorite shrubberies. The temperature bottomed out at 7:45 am, hitting -8.6°C at IDTWHQ, a cold we haven't experienced since 8:25 am on February 17th. O'Hare hit -10°C at 8 am, also the first time since 8 am February 17th. Tonight, going into the first day of astronomical winter, the forecast predicts it'll get even colder before warming up a bit on Monday. Unrelated to the weather are these...

The temperature in my neighborhood fell below freezing around 4am and kept dropping, bottoming out just a few minutes ago at -1.7°C, the coldest it's been since March 18th. So despite valiantly holding onto their leaves later in the year than I can remember, the gingko and maple trees around my house finally surrendered to the inevitable: All those leaves fell in the last couple of hours. In fact I tried to get a photo of them just pouring off the tree, but that's hard to capture in a still photo....

The weather doesn't seem that great for a planned 15-kilometer walk through Logan Square and Avondale to visit a couple of stragglers on the Brews & Choos Project. We've got 4°C under a low overcast, but only light winds and no precipitation forecast until Monday night. My Brews & Choos buddy drew up a route starting from the east end of the 606 Trail and winding up (possibly) at Jimmy's Pizza Cafe. Also, I've joined BlueSky, because it's like Xitter without the xit. The Times explains how you, too, can...

I mentioned yesterday that the gingko and maple trees in my neighborhood have held onto their leaves for much longer than usual. Yesterday's snowfall melted overnight, as predicted, but we did get below freezing for about 4 hours yesterday. And yet these two genii of trees just won't let go: The City of Chicago has had to extend the street sweeping schedule to ensure that they'll have sweepers on task when all those leaves finally do fall off. I will, of course, keep everyone updated on this tense...

We went just over 238 days and 20 hours between freezing temperatures at Inner Drive Technology WHQ, from March 27th until the wee hours of this morning. That's quite a long time for Chicago. And in fact, our snowfall this morning was the latest first snow since 2015. Here's my roof deck after about an hour of snow, around 9:40 am: And just three hours later, when taking Cassie around the block, with the snow already deeper than 80 mm: This vignette interested me because of all the maple leaves....

After one of the mildest November days in memory, the dreaded "wintry mix" has started to approach from the west: I had hoped it would delay until after 10pm, but we can't always get what we want. Winter officially begins in 10 days, but it starts in Chicago tonight.

We're having a bit of odd weather in Chicago today. The temperature rose overnight, fell after sunrise, and has gone back up almost to where it was right before sunrise. The dewpoint, however, has stayed the same. That, plus the breezy winds out of the southwest, has pushed the clouds out over the lake: This won't last. A bomb cyclone over the Pacific Northwest will push some nasty "wintry mix" towards us by Thursday. Our sunny 15°C weather will give way to this: Wednesday NightA chance of rain before...

We're having gray, rainy weather for our few hours of daylight today. We haven't yet had a freeze this fall, and none is forecast before winter officially begins in two weeks, so all the moisture in the air just hangs around and makes more fog and rain. And yet, tomorrow we might get a high of 15°C—about 8°C above normal—before flurries and "wintry mix" Wednesday night. Yeah, it's the end of November in Chicago. Otherwise, I'm still mulling our electoral loss from two weeks ago, even as it looks less...

Winnemac Park, 3:39 pm: Spiteful Brewing Tap Room, 7:08 pm:

I haven't yet got my head around a couple of thoughts I had concerning last Tuesday's debacle. I've come to a few conclusions, but I'm still mulling the implications, and also the structure of the Daily Parker post that I promised over the weekend. It might take a few more days to write. Meanwhile: The OAFPOTUS has picked South Dakota governor Kristi Noem (R) as his Homeland Security secretary and Mike Huckabee to represent the US in Israel, which have me straining not to tell the left wing of my party...

This morning, Winnemac Park, Chicago: I'm still getting through everything I ignored for the past three days. Stay tuned for a couple of Brews & Choos reviews from San Francisco, and on Tuesday, some thoughts on the election.

The sky above Chicago has nothing but sun this morning. It won't last—the forecast for tomorrow night points to July-like atmospheric moisture and epic rainfall—but Cassie and I will enjoy it as much as we can. Maybe I should stay away from these news stories until the rain starts for real: Michelle Goldberg reminds all you Hannah Arendt fans that fascism takes time to establish itself, so we have perhaps a couple of years to emigrate if the XPOTUS takes power in January: "The transition from democracy...

We officially set new record high and high-minimum temperatures yesterday, getting to 28°C (82°F) around 4pm and not dipping below 20°C for 24 hours. More autumnal weather seems likely tomorrow, but today we're still having more of a June-like day—except for the 5 fewer hours of daylight. As for the coyotes, apparently around this time of year, coyote parents kick their pups out of the nest, so we should see more juvenile canis latrans in the area until the young-uns establish their own territories or...

Forecasters predict a high temperature of 27.2°C (81°F) in Chicago today, 1.6°C (3°F) warmer than the previous record of 25.6° set in 1999. Moreover, the temperature last night only got down to 19°C, just a smidge warmer than the high-minimum temperature record set in 1946, which will likely stand as tonight's low will probably stay above 20°C. Those are normal temperatures for mid-June. Even better: those are 1991-2020 normals for mid-June, which are slightly warmer than the normals in use when I was a...

Absolutely slammed today, though only about 2 hours of it actually mattered in the scheme of things. Regular posting resumes tomorrow.

Cassie and I have gotten a full hour of walks today with the promise of more to come, as it's our third sunny day in a row, but today got above 19°C (though only up to 16.5°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ). I had two minor bugs to fix at Weather Now, but mainly I've had meetings today, so getting outside with the dog felt great. And tomorrow: a 42-kilometer walk. Meanwhile, with 18 days left before the election: Paul Krguman explains how the tariffs the XPOTUS wants to impose on us could "wreck our...

As I've done a few times since 2020, I'm planning to walk a marathon distance this coming Saturday. Last year I got to 42.2 km in 6:41:36; this year I hope to break 6:30. The weather forecast looks incredible for Saturday, which makes me optimistic: Starting nice and cool with the dewpoint staying below 9°C all day is perfect. Combine that with light winds out of the north (middle panel) and crystal-clear skies (bottom panel) and you've got perfect conditions for a long walk. Last year it got up to 26°C...

I didn't get up at 2am to drive to Mt Rainier like one of my friends, but I did spend almost all day outside yesterday. Cassie and I met friends (one human, one dog) in Elmhurst for a 9-kilometer walk down the Prairie Path in the morning. And my car flipped 30,000 km on the way back from the walk: That 2.1 L/100 km (112 MPG) is for the entire life of the car. In fact, I used some gasoline yesterday for the first time since June 15th, so this year my car is getting closer to 1.5 L/100 km (151 MPG)—and of...

Just a quick note while I've got my head down with an ugly commit and probably a few follow-up fixes. After a lovely autumn-cool weekend, today we have some summer-like weather, just warm enough to make me wonder whether I should turn on the air conditioning. I'll decide around 6, I think. On the other hand, I wonder why I'm sitting inside on one of the last days like this we'll have for six months?

So far this autumn, we've had ridiculous amounts of sunshine in Chicago, with 99% of our rapidly-declining minutes of daylight delightfully cloud-free. We haven't had such a sunny first week of September since 1955, it turns out. For that reason I ate lunch outside today, and unless something truly bizarre happens in the next few hours, I'll have dinner outside as well. Not a bad Thursday. As for the title of this post, when you multiply six by nine, you get 42 base 13, in fact: the answer to the...

Before I bugger off to get at least a couple of daylight hours in this sunny, 22°C afternoon, here are the most interesting stories that popped up today: Two Boomer economists point out that the Boomers have made an art form of siphoning wealth from the younger generations, meaning we Gen Xers will have to work longer for lower Social Security (state pensions) payments. Typical. Chicago's meteorological summer was warmer and drier than normal, the 18th-warmest since 1871. Ravinia Brewing Company and...

The weather today requires that I leave work as early as permissible and take Cassie home the long way. Of course, in order to do that, I have to eat at my desk. (I suppose I could have taken a long lunch, but then I wouldn't have as much time with my dog. Choices.) Last night I fired up the ol' grill. I am proud to report I have gotten steak grilling just right; this guy was a perfect slightly-rare-of-medium and every bite was juicy and tender: Dinner tonight (and probably tomorrow) will be leftovers...

I've added a new feature to Weather Now: user profiles. It's only the most basic implementation and, at the moment, doesn't actually do anything. But it will lead to a whole range of features that the application hasn't had since it was an old Active Server Pages app in 1999. Unfortunately, the deployment required setting up additional features on the weather API, so that user IDs travel from the UI to the API securely. The deployment took two hours, and threw up several pipeline failures for a reason...

Our lead story today concerns empty suit and Chicago Transit Authority president Dorval Carter, who just can't seem to bother himself with the actual CTA: From the end of May 2023 to spring 2024, as CTA riders had to cope with frequent delays and filthy conditions, Carter spent nearly 100 days out of town at conferences, some overseas, his schedule shows. Most of Carter’s trips between June 2023 and May 2024 were for events related to the American Public Transportation Association, a nonprofit advocacy...

I just walked Cassie about 7 blocks (1.4 km) and she took her sweet time, sniffing every blade of grass. Part of that I'm sure was that she spent 3 nights boarded, which she finds exhausting. The other part was that it's still 30°C just a few minutes before sunset. And yay, woo, we get even worse tomorrow: As Chicago Public School students return to class Monday, the heat index is expected to break [38°C]. The National Weather Service in Chicago issued an excessive heat warning from Monday afternoon to...

I spent part of the afternoon at Spiteful Brewing yesterday and made good progress in Iain Banks' second Culture novel, The Player of Games. It was a lovely fall day: Cassie enjoys going to the brewery but she does not understand that the treat bag sometimes runs out: But she does make friends everywhere she goes:

We have unusual wind and sunshine for mid-November today, with a bog-standard 10C temperature. It doesn't feel cold, though. Good weather for flying kites, if you have strong arms. Elsewhere in the world: The right wing of the US Supreme Court has finally found a firearms restriction that they can't wave away with their nonsense "originalism" doctrine. Speaking of the loony right-wing asses on the bench, the Post has a handy guide to all of the people and organizations Justice Clarence Thomas (R) and...

Remember how it snowed six days ago? Today it didn't: Unrelated, I'm monitoring some frustrating slowness with the Daily Parker. I'm not sure what's going on. Doubling the VM memory didn't seem to help. I've been thinking of writing my own blog engine again (as I have for about 15 years), so maybe this will give me the push I need.

Today's roundup includes only one Earth-shattering kaboom, for starters (and I'll save the political stuff for last): Scientists hypothesize that two continent-sized blobs of hot minerals 3,000 km below Africa and the Pacific Ocean came from Theia, the Mars-sized object that slammed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, creating the Moon in the aftermath. October was Illinois 31st warmest and 41st wettest in history (going back to 1895). National Geographic looks into whether the freak winter of...

It's still not what I want to see on Hallowe'en: Tomorrow will be warmer, we think.

We officially had our first freeze last night as the temperature at O'Hare dipped to -1°C. At Inner Drive Technology World HQ it only got down to 0.1°C, barely above freezing, but still cold enough to put on ear muffs and gloves taking Cassie to day camp this morning. It'll warm up a bit this weekend, though. Meanwhile, I'm writing a longer post about propaganda, which I may post today or tomorrow. And that's not the only fun thing happening in the world, either: Ukraine has had a lot of success blowing...

With a concert on Sunday and other things going on in my life before then, I don't know how much I'll post this week. Tomorrow I get to walk Cassie to day care and hop on a train to my downtown office in the snow, which sounds really bad until you look at the data and see that October 31st is actually the average date of Chicago's first snowfall. The weather forecast promises it won't stick. Speaking of sticking around: David French believes President Biden has threaded the needle well with his response...

We have a typical cloudy autumn day, good for reading and not so good for long walks with the dog. So I'll read and Cassie can wait for a bit: Turns out, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is even more of a scary, right-wing Christian nationalist nutter than most people knew. Paul Krugman concurs, warning that Johnson wants to eliminate the social safety net entirely. Actor Matthew Perry drowned in his California home yesterday. He was 54. New DNA evidence confirms that the Assateague horses...

I really love the Lakewood-Balmoral neighborhood in Chicago's Edgewater community area. I only had 25 minutes to walk Cassie while my car got serviced nearby, so I didn't stop to photograph everything. But I did snap this at the corner of Magnolia and Bryn Mawr: And then, just 200 meters away on the 5400 block of Wayne, this: That's not too creepy, is it?

Yesterday's temperatures at IDTWHQ fell off a cliff right before dinner: (I know, we play this game a lot.)

It's 22°C and sunny right now, making me wonder what's wrong with me that I'm putting together a software release. I probably should fire off the release, but I'm doing so under protest. I also probably won't get to read all of these things I've queued up: Peter Hamby expresses concern about the rise of the illiberal left in the younger generation. Despite the ravings of Fox News and other right-leaning propagandists, the US economy is actually doing better right now than at any point since Obama was in...

I did a thing yesterday: Yes, the pizza at Barnaby's in Northbrook, Ill., is really that good. Today will be a bit lighter.

An old friend stopped by today on her way from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest, and insisted we take our dogs to the dog beach. It's 14°C and sunny. What do you think I did? Yeah: Fortunately it's the middle of the sprint, and I have a metric shit ton (a shite tonne) of PTO hours, so this was my afternoon. If you're my boss and reading this...I swear, this is not what I planned for the day.

Yesterday, during the eclipse, which I guess some people in the US and Mexico got to enjoy: Gotta love Chicago during astronomical phenomena. Next April, I will make sure that I'm somewhere along the eclipse path where I can actually see the eclipse. Today, though, we have much better weather, as Cassie will attest: I've got chicken soup in my slow cooker, but I have two hours until I need to pull the chicken, so I'm going to go do nothing of value for a bit. With the dog.

I could have worked from home today, and probably should have, but I felt well enough to come in (wearing an N95 mask, of course). It turned that I had a very helpful meeting, which would not have worked as well remotely, but given tomorrow's forecast and the likelihood I'll still have this cold, Cassie will just have to miss a day of school. I have to jam on a presentation for the next three hours, so I'll come back to these later: Alex Shephard says this is the week Twitter finally went totally evil....

A rainy cold front passed over Inner Drive Technology WHQ just after noon, taking us from 15°C down to just above 10°C in two hours. The sun has come back out but we won't get a lot warmer until next week. I've had a lot of coding today, and I have a rehearsal in about two hours, so this list of things to read will have to do: Mother Jones's Russ Choma thinks the XPOTUS doesn't really want to win his fraud trial. Robert Wright interviewed Brown University professor Lyle Goldstein, late of the US Naval...

Chicago experienced its warmest October 1st through 4th ever, clocking in at 24.4°C, before a cold front pushed through this morning. Many of my friends, plus another 25,000 runners, look forward to Sunday's Chicago Marathon and its predicted 7°C start temperature going up to a high of 14°C. So, with real autumn temperatures finally upon us, let us chill out: David Frum puts the House Speaker nonsense in the context of a political party unable to deal with reality. Greg Sargent agrees, saying the...

Other things actually happened recently: Slate's Sarah Lipton-Lubet explains how the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court keep allowing straw plaintiffs to raise bullshit cases so they can overturn laws they don't like. Julia Ioffe, who has a new podcast explaining how Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's upbringing as a street thug informs his foreign policy today, doesn't think the West or Ukraine really need to worry about Robert Fico's election win in Slovakia. Chicago Transit...

Happy fin de Septembre, the last day of the 3rd quarter and possibly the last really summer-like weekend of 2023. At the moment it's a perfectly sunny 21.4°C at Inner Drive WHQ with a perfect forecast of 24°C. The plan today: walk 4 km to a friend's house because her kids want to see Cassie, then walk 3 km to the Horner Park DFA, then another 5 km to Spiteful Brewing's Oktoberfest, then walk the last kilometer home and plotz. I am confident both Cassie and I will succeed in all aspects of this plan....

We're having quite a string of really nice days. Yesterday's rain moved on in the early afternoon allowing Cassie and me to get a good half-hour walk in while the adobo bubbled in the slow cooker. (It was great! Needed a little more vinegar and less water in the pot though.) We headed home from Spiteful just before sunset: And then someone passed out on the couch next to me: I wish I could sleep anywhere like that.

I have three goals today, to take advantage of the gray rainy weather. First, another stab at adobo, this time with a little less vinegar, fewer peppercorns, and a skosh* more sugar. It's marinating right now, so in about three hours, I'll brown the pork belly and then slow-cook it in my Instapot for another three hours or so. Goal #2: Finish coding and deploy the update to Weather Now to use data from my Netatmo devices. Finally, I'll have actual IDTWHQ weather! Goal #3: See if it's possible to build...

IDTWHQ almost made it to 22°C this afternoon, with a low dewpoint, sunny skies, and a lake breeze. In other words, perfect. Of course, the sun sets just after 7pm tonight, fully an hour earlier than it did five weeks ago...but that's autumn for you. Not everything in the world went perfectly today, of course: House Speaker and noted invertebrate Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) continues to survive as third in line to the Presidency even though his unhinged back bench keeps forcing him to do stupid things, like...

IDTWHQ got all the way up to 16.9°C this afternoon under clear skies, a nearly perfect early-autumn day ahead to start a week-long string of them. Fortunately the landscaping company comes to my complex on Fridays, so I didn't have to rearrange my meeting schedule to work around their leaf blowers. This coming Friday, though, I expect they'll be back. As they will next spring, unless I can finally convince my HOA to ban them, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the technology: Fifty years ago, in...

Inner Drive Technology WHQ cooled down to 14°C overnight and has started to climb up into the low-20s this morning, with a low dewpoint and mostly-clear skies. Perfect sleeping weather, and almost-perfect walking weather! In a few minutes I'm going to take Cassie out for a good, long walk, but first I want to queue up some stuff to read when it's pissing with rain tomorrow: A Wall Street Journal poll (which the XPOTUS funded in part) appears to have bad news for the Biden re-election campaign, not least...

Today's weather feels like we might have real fall weather soon. Today's XKCD kind of nails it, too—not the weather, but the calendar. In addition to nice weather, we have a nice bit of elected-official hypocrisy, too: the president of the Chicago Teachers Union got caught sending her son to a private school, and giving a really crappy explanation for it. In other news: A jury took all of four hours to convict right-wing intellectual grifter Peter Navarro of contempt of Congress for ignoring the January...

The temperature has crept up towards 34°C all day after staying at a comfortable 28°C yesterday and 25°C Friday. It's officially 33°C at O'Hare but just a scoshe above 31°C at IDTWHQ. Also, I still feel...uncomfortable in certain places closely associated with walking. All of which explains why I'm jotting down a bunch of news stories to read instead of walking Cassie. First, if you have tomorrow off for Labor Day, you can thank Chicago workers. (Of course, if you have May 1st off for Labor Day, you can...

It's 14°C right now, going down to -3°C tonight. Then it's back up to 8°C on Friday. Because why wouldn't the beginning of winter feel like April? While you ponder that, read this: Tom Nichols warns that the authoritarian right may have lost the plot recently, but not for long. Patty Davis thinks that ignoring the XPOTUS will make him go away. That's cute. The Republicans have asked loser Blake Masters to explain why they lost. United Airlines and American Airlines have moved away from small regional...

In the last couple of days, I've observed a phenomenon I don't remember seeing in years past, perhaps because the city has a different mix of tree species around my new place. It looks like all the silver maples in Ravenswood dropped their leaves just in the past 72 hours: All the other trees in the neighborhood took their time over the warm, dry fall we've had, but the silver maples hung on like a 6-year-old holding his breath. Researching this post, I learned that the city requires property owners to...

Remember the stew I made Wednesday? It turned out one of my best: And I had a lot of leftovers: Remember Cassie getting a long walk to the big dog park Thursday? We did the same thing yesterday: And after dinner, I got this rare (inverted for your convenience) photo of Cassie getting a belly rub: Today, however, it's rainy and cold, so we will have less walking—but possibly more couch/belly-rub time.

I thought Wednesday might turn out the last warm day of 2022, but yesterday and today haven't felt too bad either. Apparently tomorrow will also get above 13°C as well. Not a bad Thanksgiving weekend. And Cassie got almost 2 hours of walkies yesterday and may get about the same amount today. Otherwise, regular posting will probably resume tomorrow or Sunday.

With only about a week of autumn left officially, we have some great weather today. Cassie is with her pack at day care and I'm inside my downtown office looking at the sun and (relative) warmth outside, but the weather should continue through Friday. What else is going on? A reader who remembers watching The Play live on TV sent a story about the statue the Bears erected to Keven Moen and unveiled last week. A new study ranks Asian and Scandinavian public-transit systems best in the world, with...

No matter where you find yourself today, at least you're not in Western New York: The lake-effect snowstorm keeps pounding the Southtowns, with major highways and some roads closed. A travel ban has been reinstituted for the City of Buffalo from William Street downtown to the Town of Cheektowaga line and everything south, according to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday the Thruway from Rochester to the Pennsylvania border was closed to commercial traffic, although...

Between my actual full-time job and the full-time job I've got this week preparing for King Roger, Cassie hasn't gotten nearly the time outdoors that she wants. The snow, rain, and 2°C we have today didn't help. (She doesn't mind the weather as much as I do.) Words cannot describe how less disappointed I am that I will have to miss the XPOTUS announcing his third attempt to grift the American People, coming as it does just a few hours after US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) announced his bid for Senate...

Tonight's forecast calls for the S-word: The first real snow of the season could hit as soon as Monday night — and more snowflakes could fall throughout the week. Chicago’s set to have a snowy, chilly week, with most days seeing temperatures [below freezing], according to the National Weather Service. Monday will be partly sunny and could warm up to 5°C, according to the National Weather Service. There’s a 50 percent chance for snow overnight, mostly after 4 a.m. Tuesday. Snow is expected to fall...

The Daylight Saving Time arguments that crop up twice a year encapsulate American decision-making so well. People argue for one position or another based on what works best for them; people predict doom and gloom if their view doesn't prevail; Congress makes a change that everyone hates (and, as in 1975, they have to repeal); and not a lot changes. It also has nuances that most people don't understand (or care to) and stems from a social construct completely within our control that people think is a...

So far I've managed to avoid getting soaked running lots of errands, but the cold front descending upon us has stirred things up anyway. Right now, O'Hare reports 48 km/h winds with gusts up to 65 km/h and a peak wind just before noon of 92 km/h from the south—directly across all 6 main runways there. Whee! I sincerely hope no one tried to land in that.

It got up to 23°C at IDTWHQ this afternoon, and even now, three hours after sunset, it's still 17°C. Not a record, but not bad for November. I still have all the windows open. (Not for long though.) We've also had amazing foliage this year. For example, this ash tree a few blocks from my house still hasn't dropped all its leaves: And Cassie found another sunbeam after we got home: The forecast says we get three or four more days of this before we get back to normal autumn temperatures. I'm OK with that.

It's a quiet day at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters 6.0 as I bang away at the 60 or so boxes of books in the library. Only 10 or so of those boxes need to go all the way to my office loft on the 4th floor, so I should make do with only a few dozen Ibuprofens this afternoon. Meanwhile, Cassie has found a sunbeam on the front deck, just as she did yesterday: And as a bonus, here's our walk to doggie day care on Friday morning: Our fall colors just keep going this year. The maples have reached...

I believe I'm about halfway through the kitchen (the worst room to pack), and struggling not to go immediately to Empirical for my last pint there. It's sunny, breezy, and at this moment 24°C outside—perfect beer-on-a-patio weather. Alas, though, I have to pack...the dishes. And glassware. Maybe I can do this in two hours?

I have only two rooms left to pack before my move on Monday: the master bedroom (which will take me about 30 minutes and the movers about the same), and the kitchen (which will take me most of today). I also had to reserve some time later this afternoon to grab a pint with a friend at Empirical Brewery, because (a) the weather could not look better and (b) they close permanently tomorrow night. Let's move on from the demise of the second brewery three blocks from my new house in the period between me...

Busy day today, but I finished a major task at work just now. As I'm waiting for the CI system to finish compiling and pushing out a test build, I'm going to read these: Jonathan Chait shares his chilling observations from the National Socialist Conservatism Conference in Miami. Gen-Xers like me have started contending with...middle age. The Chicago City Council doesn't like working with the CTA, even as everyone in the city complains about CTA frequency and reliability. Maybe if we stopped thinking of...

The temperature outside has hit 19°C, so I've just opened 26 of the 30 windows in my house (the other four are behind furniture and hard to reach). Because I'm moving in about three weeks, and because the forecast says a cold front will come through mid-day tomorrow, I expect that when I close most of the windows tonight they'll stay closed as long as I live here. Still, with all that sun and warm air on the other side of those open windows, it's time to take Cassie out.

Hurricane Ian has made landfall over Tampa, Fla., as a strong Category-4 storm: In a 3:05 p.m. update, the National Hurricane Center said the massive Category 4 storm made landfall on the southwest coast with 240 km/h maximum sustained winds. The most immediate and life-threatening concern was storm surge — the waters of the Gulf of Mexico pushed inland by Ian. The surge predictions from the National Hurricane Center soared overnight to 4 to 6 meters for Englewood to Bonita Bay, a forecast so high a new...

...that street flooding in Chicago is a feature, not a bug: Chicago’s sewer network has an “inlet control valve system” that intentionally limits water intake during heavy rainfall events so as to not overwhelm the wastewater system, with the streets acting as a temporary holding area. For that reason, the street flooding is normal, [Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th)] said. But residents who are experiencing over-the-curb basement flooding should file a ticket with 311 and reach out to local officials to report...

We haven't had a measurable rainfall in 12 days. Then, this morning: Fortunately I got Cassie out right before it hit, because my front yard looks like this right now: It should clear up by afternoon. I hope. (And so does Cassie.)

From around now through the middle of October, the days get noticeably shorter, with the sun setting 2 minutes earlier each day around the equinox. Fall is almost here—less than 8 days away, in fact. But that also means cooler weather, lower electricity bills (because of the cooler weather), and lots of rehearsals and performances. Before any of that happens, though, I'll read these: Damon Linker warns that "there is no happy ending to America's [XPOTUS] problem." Anthony Fauci has announced he'll...

We've just completed Sprint 50 at my day job, which included upgrading our codebase to .NET 6 and adding a much-desired feature to our administration tools. Plus, we wrote code to analyze 500,000 emails from a public dataset for stress testing one of our product's features. Not bad for a six-day sprint. The sun is out, and while I don't hear a lot of birds singing, I do see a lot of squirrels gathering walnuts from the tree across the street. It's also an unseasonably warm 7°C at Inner Drive Technology...

Cassie and I took a walk by Montrose Harbor on Sunday afternoon at just the right time: And yesterday, at my downtown office, I also got the timing right: Winter begins tomorrow, but we can still enjoy the last few days of autumn.

While running errands this morning I had the same thought I've had for the past three or so weeks: the trees look great this autumn. Whatever combination of heat, precipitation, and the gradual cooling we've had since the beginning of October, the trees refuse to give up their leaves yet, giving us cathedrals of yellow, orange, and red over our streets. And then I come home to a bunch of news stories that also remind me everything changes: Like most sentient humans, Adam Serwer feels no surprise (but...

My day started before dawn waiting (unsuccessfully) for Cassie to pee in a howling rain storm, and will end late tonight after our penultimate rehearsal before our November 7th concert. So unless something truly catastrophic happens, no real post today. Tomorrow I'll have something about the book I just finished.

A collection of weather phenomena off the west coast of North America, including a bomb cyclone, will give northern California record rainfall over the next day and a half: Amid an exceptional drought that has wrought havoc on California for years, a Level 5 out of 5 atmospheric river is soaking the region, dumping double-digit rainfall totals and up to six feet of mountain snow. This heavy precipitation will help ease the drought but produce dangerous mudslides and debris flows in areas recently...

Cassie and I both love these crystal-clear autumn days in Chicago, though as far as I know she spent her first two autumns in Tennessee. Does Nashville have crisp fall mornings? I don't know for sure, and Cassie won't say. I meant to highlight these stories yesterday but got into the deep flow of refactoring: People who adopted dogs during the pandemic have discovered that dogs cost money. No kidding. Also, living alone costs more than living with a partner, even though singles have more social contacts...

Oh boy: Voters have defeated billionaire, populist Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš through the simple process of banding together to kick him out, proof that an electorate can hold the line against strongmen. A school administrator in Texas told teachers that "if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an 'opposing' perspective." Because Texas. Oakland Police should stop shooting Black men having medical emergencies, one would...

About that new phone, I have to say, I am very impressed with T-Mobile's new 5G network: Also note that temperature bug in the upper-left corner. Yes, it was 26°C yesterday afternoon in Chicago. For comparison, October 10th has a normal high temperature of 18.2°C. June 7th has a normal high of 26°C. I hope autumn actually starts sometime this month.

Chicago finished September with an average temperature of 21.27°C, making it the 5th-warmest on record, and almost tying September 1971's 21.33°C. Meanwhile, the NCDC predicts warmer-than-normal temperatures through the end of next week. This shows one of the ways global warming will actually make Chicago a better place to live. If trends continue, we'll continue to have warmer and wetter winters than the historical norms, at the cost of warmer and drier summers. The downside, of course, is drought, and...

Actually, I'm ecstatic that a cold front blew in off the lake yesterday afternoon, dropping the temperature from 30°C to 20°C in about two hours. We went from teh warmest September 27th in 34 years to...autumn. Finally, some decent sleepin' weather! Meanwhile: The former head of the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, a vocal anti-vaxxer, has wound up in the ICU with Covid. (This is the current union leader, who has been suspended without pay for insubordination.) Murders in the entire US...

My apartment has 30 windows, and at the moment all 28 of the ones I can reach are open. But the temperature keeps ticking up. Right now my office is a comfortable 25°C with a gentle breeze passing through. The Nest sensor in my bedroom reads 23°C, also a lovely temperature for the end of September. Tonight, however, I would like to sleep, and at 23°C I feel too warm to sleep well. I prefer it around, oh, 17-18°C. I can do all right at 21°C. So: do I wait for the temperature to fall naturally after the...

I've opened nearly every window in my house to let in the 15°C breeze and really experience the first real fall morning in a while. Chicago will get above-normal temperatures for the next 10 days or so, but in the beginning of October that means highs in the mid-20s and lows in the mid-teens. Even Cassie likes the change. Since I plan to spend nearly every moment of daylight outside for the rest of this weekend, I want to note a few things to read this evening when I come back inside: TFW your bogus...

Today might be the last hot day of the year in Chicago. (I hope so, anyway.) While watching the cold front come through out my office window, with the much-needed rain ahead of it, I have lined up some news stories to read later today: My alderman got attacked on Saturday a couple blocks from my house by a well-known local vagrant. Josh Marshall believes US Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has no plans to run for re-election. In related news, CNN explains what happens to all the rats when a hurricane...

I completed a long-overdue project for my condo board today, made more tolerable by sitting in my relocated office with all the air and light it provides. Having completed that project, I will shortly take Cassie for another hour-long walk.

Just as I did a year ago, I'm planning to walk up to Lake Bluff today, and once again the weather has cooperated. I'll take cloudy skies and 25°C for a 43-kilometer hike. (I would prefer 20°C and cloudy, but I'll take 25°C anyway.) As I enjoy my breakfast in my sunny, airy office right now, mentally preparing for a (literal) marathon hike, life feels good. Well, until I read these things: Michael Tomasky thinks "it's time to mess with Texas." Josh Marshall flatly calls the five Republican justices...

The first day of autumn has brought us lovely cool weather with even lovelier cool dewpoints. We expect similar weather through the weekend. I hope so; Friday I plan another marathon walk, and Saturday I'm throwing a small party. Meanwhile, we have a major deliverable tomorrow at my real job, and Cassie has a routine vet check-up this afternoon. But with this weather, I'm extra happy that I moved my office to the sunroom.

Happy Sunday. Tonight the sun sets in Chicago at 4:30pm, and won't set after 4:30 again until New Year's Eve. So in the few hours of daylight I have left, I'll read a few things: A low pressure area northeast of Chicago has brought 100 km/h winds to the area, but at least it won't snow today. Entomologists in Washington State eradicated a "small" nest containing several hundred murder hornets. They worry a couple of queens might have escaped. The BBC fact-checked rumors that 10,000 dead people voted in...

The record for consecutive 21°C-plus days in Chicago is 5, set 15-19 November 1953. Today will be the third in a row, with the forecast showing the fourth, fifth, and sixth coming this weekend and on Monday. In other sunny news, the electoral map has shifted a bit overnight: Arizona's count has slowly shifted away from Biden while in both Georgia and Pennsylvania the count has put Biden ahead. In Georgia, Biden now leads by 1,200 votes, with a few thousand absentee ballots from heavily-Democratic areas...

We have some decent fall colors this year. They should peak sometime this week, but I didn't want to waste perfect weather this evening, so I took the drone over to Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum: Here's the end still, with a bit of processing in Lightroom, taken from here: Graceland closed for the longest period in its history after the August derecho that knocked 200 trees and caused $250,000 in damage. Fortunately the surviving trees look beautiful in their autumn best.

While I'm waiting for Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris to face off at 8pm Central, I have other things to occupy my thoughts: The First Lady has had a remarkably charmed pandemic life. Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein were "a driving force" in the program of separating children from their parents at the border in 2018. Today is the 65th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's first public recitation of "Howl." Apple's iOS v14 will finally have some of the security and privacy features Android...

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...

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.

A new United Nations report projects that the world's average temperature will hit 3.9°C above pre-industrial levels in 80 years without massive, immediate cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. The additional energy the atmosphere has absorbed in the 80 years has given us the perfect Thanksgiving weekend travel environment: Not one, not two, but three powerful storm systems will make travel difficult to near impossible at times both before and after Thursday’s holiday. A record-breaking “bomb cyclone”...

It's rush hour in Chicago right now, where commuters are slogging through snow and -5°C temperatures as the second significant winter storm pushes through the area. And I feel for them. But here in London, it's 9°C and sunny, so one doesn't even need a coat to go out for lunch. I also had the presence of mind to park in the $17-a-day garage instead of the $19-a-day outside parking lot at O'Hare, which will add 5 minutes to my trip from Terminal 5 to my car and save 15 minutes shoveling it out. Sometimes...

We have pretty normal autumn weather in Chicago right now, in that it's gray and cold with temperatures about 3°C below normal. Friday morning, when I fly out, temperatures will fall to 10°C below normal and then 13°C below normal when I get back Tuesday. We have this ridiculous late-autumn chill because of climate change. Warm air over Greenland and the Grand Banks has distorted the circumpolar jet stream into an omega shape, bringing the Arctic to Canada and the central US and bringing California to...

On Wednesday night it snowed, and the temperature spent several hours below freezing. That caused this to happen: Those leaves fell en masse from a linden tree in my neighborhood. Which means they won't fall in two weeks when they're bright yellow. Most of the trees in my neighborhood, and the ivy covering my own building, dropped all their leaves the morning after the snowstorm. So we don't really get an autumn this year. And that makes me sad. Nature, sometimes you suck.

O'Hare's high temperature today of 19.4°C occurred at 5am. From then until about 9am the temperature lingered around 19°C. And then the cold front came through. Between 9am and 11am the temperature plunged 8°C. It's now 11°C and raining. Tomorrow it'll be 11°C and sunny. Overnight it'll be 3°C in the city and -2°C in the far Western suburbs. Autumn comes to Chicago all at once. Today's the day it chose this year.

Last night, Chicago set an all-time record for the warmest low temperature in October: 23°C, which feels more like mid-July than early-October, following the high yesterday of 30°C. Not to fear, though. A cold front came through just after midnight, bringing the temperature down to 14°C by 8am. With drizzly rain. Gotta love Chicago.

WaPo has an interactive map: Cue the 2019 Fall Foliage Prediction Map on SmokyMountains.com, a site promoting tourism in that region. The interactive tool is one of the most helpful resources to reference as you plan your autumnal adventures. “We believe this interactive tool will enable travelers to take more meaningful fall vacations, capture beautiful fall photos and enjoy the natural beauty of autumn,” data scientist and SmokyMountains.com chief technology officer Wes Melton said in a statement....

Yesterday we set a record-high temperature: 34°C at O'Hare. Even with the lake-side cooling we had downtown, it still sucked. Today, however, a cold front is slowly marching across the prairie and the temperature is forecast to fall to 13°C overnight. Good timing. The September equinox is tomorrow night. So even though meteorological autumn began on the 1st, it's nice that astronomical autumn will begin right on time.

Sometimes, on Saturday afternoon, you just have to binge-watch Netflix while going through old boxes. I haven't told Parker that there will soon be more boxes. And then more boxes. And then nothing but boxes. He'll find that out on his own in good time. For now, I'll just let him believe that I'm rearranging things because that's what humans do sometimes. But he's eyeing the boxes warily. I think he suspects that his life is about to get disrupted. To the extent that he can suspect anything, or...

After a high temperature of 33°C yesterday (the 7th in a row above 32°C), a much-anticipated cold front came through overnight (as predicted). It's now 18°C. But: Indications are that the air mass will begin to moderate Sunday, with another warmer-than-normal period a good part of next week. This time around, daily highs should approach the 27°C mark. Rain looks to be sparse at least until the middle of next week. That last bit is important, because we're having a drought. But at least it's delightfully...

Chicago is having its 7th consecutive day of 32°C-plus heat, including 5 straight days above 33°C, a new record for this late in the season. Fortunately, a cold front is marching across the prairie and promises to bring a 15°C temperature drop overnight and high temperatures in the 20s for the rest of the week. We didn't have a horrible summer here. So we're not thrilled that the crisp, cool days of autumn have been delayed a full month. But tomorrow we can open our windows again.

St. Boniface Cemetery, Chicago: