The Daily Parker

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 devastated by fires.

Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow swaths of exceptionally moist air, sometimes sourced from the tropics, that can produce excessive amounts of precipitation.

“It will be a wild 24 to 36 hours across northern California as we will see an extreme and possible historic atmospheric river push through the region,” wrote the National Weather Service in Sacramento, calling it a “dangerous, high-impact weather system.”

Flash flood watches are up for most of Central and Northern California, blanketing some of the same areas that went upward of six months without a stitch of measurable rain. Sacramento recorded its first 0.01 inches of rain last week since March 19, capping off a record-setting 222 days without precipitation. Now it is bracing for more than half a foot of rain and flooding.

The storm offshore of the Pacific Northwest driving this atmospheric river into the coastline rapidly intensified at a staggering rate. Meteorologists refer to a storm as a “bomb” if its minimum central air pressure drops by 24 millibars or more in 24 hours, signifying intense and speedy “deepening.” That sucks in more air and allows the storm to intensify.

This particular storm strengthened at twice that rate as a “double bomb” with its pressure tanking to 943 millibars, which, according to the Weather Service, would make it “the strongest known system for the area.”

Over the mainland United States, such low atmospheric pressure is practically unheard of. Even on the East Coast, where cyclones regularly strengthen into massive nor’easters, pressures seldom fall this low. The powerful March 1993 “superstorm,” among the most intense and damaging storms ever to strike the United States, bottomed out at “only” 960 millibars.

Welcome to climate change: seven months without rain, then nothing but rain for two days. Fun.

Here in Chicago we just have a normal gray rainy October afternoon. I'm glad we don't have to worry about 150 mm of rain in the next four hours.

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 and tend to be happier. Again, no kidding.
• It turns out that online "wellness" communities spread huge amounts of anti-vaccine bullshit.
• “This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated,” said the geosciences department chair at Williams College, causing me to react loudly enough to alarm Cassie.
• The worst airline in the history of the world died pathetically a week ago, and its successor airline managed to launch with truly ugly livery.

I will now make Cassie drool buckets by using salmon skin as a training tool.

On this day in 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed their survey of the disputed Maryland-Pennsylvania border, which became even more contentious in 1780 when Pennsylvania aboolished slavery. A group of surveyors started re-surveying the border in 2019; I can't find out whether they finished.

Meanwhile, 255 years later, politics is still mostly local:

• Our professional women's basketball team, the Chicago Sky, won the WNBA championship yesterday.
• Chicago's recently-retired Inspector General has some harsh words for the city's government structure and the current administration.
• Chicago Alderman Jim Gardner got kicked off all of his county committees for general dickishness.
• Farther from my doorstep, President Biden has not spent a single day with approval ratings below his predecessors', thank you very much.
• Missouri Governor Mike Parson (R) not only completely fails to understand how the Web works, but he also can't stand anyone pointing out his administration's incompetence. 
• Novelist Christopher Buckley eulogizes the 500-year history of the "Pope's Airline," Alitalia, which Cranky Flyer has previously called the worst airline ever.
• Barbados will become a true republic next month, at which point Queen Elizabeth II will no longer be head of state for the island nation.

Finally, Chicago has perfectly clear skies for only the third time this month after yesterday and the 4th, getting only 39% of possible sunshine for almost the past three weeks.

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 think.
• The Federal Railroad Administration and Amtrak have released plans for new passenger train routes from Chicago to other Midwest cities.
• Meanwhile, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D) has proposed hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives to encourage electric-vehicle production in the state.
• New Republic's David Klion says Denis Villenueuve's upcoming Dune adaptation "is the adaptation Frank Herbert's novel deserves," and I can't wait until it comes out on the 22nd!
• As Chicago has stuck to June-like temperatures for the past two weeks, an active jet stream has given the Rocky Mountain upwards of 750 mm of snow and temperatures as low as -10°C.
• Researchers have demonstrated how to reverse-engineer fake photos generated by generative adversarial networks (GANs), a common type of AI.
• Archaeologists have gotten closer to figuring out who massacred a village off the coast of Sweden around 400 CE, and why.

Cassie has bugged me for the last hour, even though we went out two hours ago. I assume she wants dinner. I will take care of that presently.

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.

So many things this morning, including a report not yet up on WBEZ's website about the last Sears store in Chicago. (I'll find it tomorrow.)

• Jennifer Rubin advises XPOTUS "critics and democracy lovers" to leave the Republican Party.
• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) completely caved against a unified Democratic Party and will vote to extend the (probably-unconstitutional) debt limit another three months.
• An abolitionist's house from 1869 may get landmark approval today from the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. (It's already in the National Register of Historic Places).
• Could interurban trains come back?
• Arts critic Jo Livingstone has a mixed review of No Time to Die, but I still plan to see it this weekend.
• 18 retired NBA players face wire-fraud and insurance-fraud charges for allegedly scamming the NBA's Health and Welfare Benefit Plan out of $4 million.
• Even though we've had early-September temperatures the past week, we've also had only 19% of possible sunlight, and only 8% in the past six days. We have not seen the sun since Monday, in fact, making the steady 19°C temperature feel really depressing.
• Two new Black-owned breweries will go on the Brews and Choos list soon.
• Condé Nast has named Chicago the best big city in the US for the fifth year running.

Finally, President Biden is in Chicago today, promoting vaccine mandates. But because of the aforementioned clouds, I have no practical way of watching Air Force One flying around the city.

Update, 12:38 CDT: The sun is out!

Update, 12:39 CDT: Well, we had a minute of it, anyway.

The United States Supreme Court began their term earlier today, in person for the first time since March 2020. Justice Brett Kavanagh (R) did not attend owing to his positive Covid-19 test last week.

In other news:

• The Post, Guardian, and other news outlets have released their stories on the largest document dump ever, which purports to show how the ultra-rich avoid taxation by stashing their money overseas.
• Indians taking a highly-competitive test to become teachers in the state of Rajasthan paid upwards of $8,000 for Bluetooth-enabled flip-flops in order to cheat.
• Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen will testify before Congress tomorrow on the company's business practices.
• Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram have apparently gone offline today in what looks like a DNS problem, to the delight of millions of employers.
• Block Club Chicago explains the tax break that makes entire blocks of vacant storefronts way too common in the city.
• September was warmer and drier than normal in Illinois, which pretty much failed to suck.

So how did facebook.com disappear from root DNS, the day after 60 Minutes aired a segment on Haugen?

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 most of Northern Illinois desperately needs rain—especially this close to the harvest. (Just not too much rain, because, you know, harvest.)

For now, though, I love the sunny and comfortable (mid-20s during the day, high-10s overnight) weather this time of year.

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 went up 30% in 2020, perhaps because people did not take well to all the crazy in the world.
• Paul Krugman has had it with the "Rip Van Winkle caucus:" "some Democrats seem to have formed their perceptions about both economics and politics during the Clinton years and haven’t updated their views since."
• Why does the Supreme Court have such bad press lately? Maybe because they have such bad communication skills.
• The Great Chicago Fire, 150 years ago next Friday, destroyed 17,450 buildings but spared these six.
• Sociologist Ellen Lamont points out that an equal (hetero) marriage requires equal dating first.
• It turns out that big, ugly McMansions don't sell in any economy.
• The CTA Red Line modernization project will employ a 90-meter crane when workers start building the mainline supports in a couple months.

And though the article could use an editor, Whisky Advocate has a short bit on Aaron Sorkin's love of whisky in his movies.

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 sun goes down in a bit less than three hours? Or do I hit the A/C? The NWS says it'll be 21°C by 11pm and 17°C right before sunrise.

See? My ancestors didn't have to think about this when they wandered the savannahs of Africa 100,000 years ago. They just had to worry about lions.