Leading the hit parade of horrors this morning, London's Heathrow Airport completely shut down after an electric transformer caught fire yesterday, leading to over 1,100 flight cancellations so far. Flight operations have resumed, sort of, but Europe's busiest airport going offline will cause rippling failures throughout world aviation for a few more days at least.
Speaking of massive transport failures, we have yet more evidence that the Clown Prince of X knows dick about cars (or rockets or software or anything, really) as Tesla recalled nearly all of its Cybertrucks after people discovered the door panels can fall off. That's if they don't rust, or crumple, or warp, or cut your fingers off.
I Googled "how bad is the Tesla Cybertruck" and got so many responses I had to whittle the search down to just the last month, and it still took a couple of pages to find a source that most people trust: Consumers Union. And they don't like it at all. (I love this bit, too: "Unfortunately, we can’t ask Tesla any follow-up questions about the vehicle—even clarifying ones that could help us better understand it—because Tesla dissolved its media relations department in 2020, and the company did not respond when contacted through its press email." This is the guy now destroying the US government. You were warned, and you voted for the OAFPOTUS anyway.)
Time to walk the dog again, now that it's up to 9°C.
As predicted, none of yesterday's snow stuck around. Here's (a new edit of) yesterday's photo:
And the same spot just over 24 hours later:
In fact, the temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ has remained above freezing since just before 9am Monday, though it did scrape along at 0.1°C for a couple of hours last night.
Today's forecast predicts a high of 14°C, and this weekend's Garmin challenge predicts Cassie will get a 5 kilometer walk this afternoon.
The sun passed directly overhead the equator just past 4am Chicago time, marking what many people call the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. And because it's March in Chicago, this is what Cassie and I squished through on her way to dog school this morning:
And this was the view from my train into the Loop half an hour later:
Of course, this being March, I can see from my office window that the sun is about to come out and melt every last snowflake from the ground before I pick Cassie up from dog school:
Let me zoom in and enhance, because it may not be clear what's going on here:
The area east (to the right) of the blue line is cloudy; to the west it's completely clear. The white stuff you see between the black lines is snow, which will almost entirely melt because of the clear skies and warming temperatures. It should get up to 4°C today and 13°C tomorrow--more than enough heat to let us forget this unfortunate precipitation ever happened. In fact, the temperature didn't even fall below freezing at Inner Drive Technology WHQ overnight, halting its descent at 0.1°C and holding steady under the clouds.
Ah, spring!
Who doesn't like the fun and adventure of spring weather in Chicago? I mean, you don't see temperature graphs like this coming from Los Angeles:
At 5:07 pm on Friday—only about 40 hours ago—it was 23.3°C, I had all my windows open, and I had a polo shirt on when I walked Cassie a few minutes later. Now it's 1.2°C, the temperature has dropped steadily since 3pm yesterday, and I'm about to put on a winter coat because it's bloody snowing.
This week we'll continue to whipsaw around the freezing mark, with forecast high temperatures of 11°C tomorrow and 18°C on Tuesday, followed by forecast lows of -1°C Wednesday night and 0°C on Thursday night.
Eventually we'll have consistently warm temperatures, and in fairness the snow isn't sticking. But March really knows how to torture us.
As forecast, O'Hare had an official high temperature of 26°C yesterday, the warmest temperature recorded there since 4pm on October 30th and the normal high temperature for June 10th. Inner Drive Technology WHQ got all the way up to 23.3°C just after 5pm, so we had all the windows open until the squall line blasted through after midnight.
Today we have a lot of wind and a lot of dust blown up from storms in Texas and Oklahoma. Without the dust, we'd have clear blue skies right now:
Remember what I wrote Thursday about how the air usually looked this time of year back in the 1980s? Today is just a little hazier. Well, OK, quite a bit hazier:
Even Cassie is wondering what that scent is:
That's the scent of climate change, baby. Same as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Fitting that we've got the resurrected zombie corpse of Herbert Hoover in the White House today.
It's 21°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ and 22°C at O'Hare right now. In addition to being the normal high temperature for May 20th, that reading at O'Hare is the warmest since 11pm on October 30th. The forecast for O'Hare predicts a high near 26°C, which is normal for June 10th.
Which is all a long way of saying: I'm about to change into a polo shirt, take Cassie for a walk, and open every window in my house—not necessarily in that order.
By the way, the eclipse last night was really cool. I only wish I could have fallen back asleep more quickly after getting up to view it.
It's 13°C and sunny, so despite having added a couple of really useful features to Weather Now (still in the dev/test environment; sorry), I'm going to take Cassie on a 45-minute walk and then have a beer.
Take today's temperatures, for example:
Fortunately, Cassie got a half-hour walk at 7am and a 25-minute walk at noon, just before the cold front came through. And the next couple of days will be...more Spring:
This Afternoon
Snow. Steady temperature around 1. Breezy, with a northwest wind around 45 km/h, with gusts as high as 70 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than one centimeter possible.
Tonight
Snow showers likely before midnight, then isolated flurries between midnight and 4am. Cloudy, then gradually becoming partly cloudy, with a low around -3. Windy, with a northwest wind 45 to 50 km/h decreasing to 35 to 40 km/h after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 75 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of less than a half centimeter possible.
Thursday
Sunny, with a high near 4. Breezy, with a west wind 30 to 35 km/h decreasing to 20 to 25 km/h in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 55 km/h.
Thursday Night
A slight chance of rain before 1am, then a slight chance of snow between 1am and 3am, then a slight chance of rain and snow after 3am. Increasing clouds, with a low around 1. West wind 10 to 15 km/h, with gusts as high as 25 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
Friday
Snow likely. Cloudy, with a high near 2. West southwest wind 10 to 15 km/h becoming northeast in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
But...it'll be 14° on Monday, 17°C on Tuesday, and 16°C on Wednesday, which will feel a lot more like spring. And Cassie will get more walks.
One of my work projects has a monthly release these days, so right now I'm watching a DevOps pipeline run through about 400 time-consuming integration tests before I release this month's update. That gives me some time to catch up on all this:
The New York Times has a long explanation of how the Clown Prince of X took over the federal bureaucracy.
All right, the build has finished, so I can now deploy. And for no reason other than I like it, here is a photo of Cassie watching TV with me last night:
Garmin periodically challenges its users to get active. About once a month they put out a distance challenge for walkers. This month, the challenge was to do a 4.8 km walk this weekend. Cassie and I just did that, as it turns out Jimmy's Pizza Cafe is conveniently 2.6 km away. It helps that we haven't had temperatures this warm (4.0°C) since just after 1pm on the 3rd.
Butters, however, did not like getting left behind. According to my security camera, she spent 18 minutes crying by the front door, took a quick stroll around my lower level, then went back to cry by the front door for another 10 minutes before going upstairs to cry in the living room. She gave up for a while, then returned to the front door for another 15 minutes, alternately crying and sitting quietly. I haven't watched the whole 54 minutes but I'd bet she was quiescent for less than 10.
I am sorry for my neighbors. Fortunately, the neighbor to the north is out of town. And frankly, the neighbors to the south have a 3-year-old boy who makes far more noise in the aggregate than any dogs I've ever owned (or looked after).
Tomorrow I'll go back to complaining about world events. Right now, I'm taking both dogs and my friend Kat's new book to Spiteful Brewing.