The Daily Parker

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.)

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.

We woke up this morning to a brisk -16°C with an even brisker wind chill around -25°C. It hasn't been this cold in Chicago since the -19°C we had on March 3rd, 303 days ago. And still, no measurable snow in December, which has happened only four times in recorded history.

Even Parker didn't want to go for much of a walk this morning. And I'm not confident about my Fitbit numbers for the day...

Also: Happy New Year to Australia, Papua New Guinea, Japan, and in less than an hour, Singapore.

Vacation. It always makes me a little crazy. I need stuff to do. And even though the temperature has plummeted to -12°C overnight, that means going outside and not sitting at my computer.

When Parker and I get too cold, I'll start reading these articles:

• Ezra Klein's interview with Paul Krugman.
• Eric Jaffe's explanation of "Broken Windows" policing and its defenders.
• Walter Laqueur's description of Russian epistemic closure.
• Cranky Flyer's story of the horrors of traveling with children.

And because my (irritated) Euchre coach demands it, I'll review (one more time) Harvey Lapp's Ten Commandments of Euchre.

As of Saturday, Chicago set a new record in gloominess by having no sunshine at all for 17 days in December:

Low pressure passed to our north and a cold front swept through our area from the west Saturday. Winter Weather Advisories for 50 to 200 mm of snow were in place from northeast Nebraska through northern Iowa and southern Minnesota into northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, while cloudy skies and widely scattered light rain showers prevailed across the Chicago area. But those clouds cut off the sun – Frank Wachowski’s sunshine recorder measured no sunlight – making Saturday the record 17th day this December with zero percent sunshine – the old record was 16 zero percent sunshine days registered on 4 separate years – the last in 2009.

The clouds have persisted into the nighttime hours as well – trapping the nighttime heat and keeping our overnight lows so far this month 4.7°C, and boosting our overall temperature average to 3.3°C above normal. These relatively mild temperature should be reflected in lower December heating bills.

The sun is peeking out today after being out all day yesterday.

And still no snow this month, nor any in the forecast. Weird. In fact, this December's weather has been much more like a typical November in Chicago: gloomy and cold, but not that cold, and not that snowy.

We'll get snow, though. Oh yes. We will...

The brilliant Central Coast morning that produced the photo I posted earlier gave me a hell of a view climbing out of SFO an hour ago:

Home in four hours...

...I stopped here one more time this morning:

At the moment Chicago's weather isn't too bad. At the moment. But it's still nothing like this.

By the way, I've actually reduced the saturation in this photo a bit. The sun was directly behind me and relatively low on the horizon, so the colors in this shot are very close to what I saw.

Chicago has had its least snowfall—specifically, just a trace with nothing measurable—in the past 102 Decembers:

Only three Decembers have recorded this little snow since records began in 1884!

1889, 1894 and 1912 hold those numbers.

No snow is forecast through the end of the year, but it will be a chilly -9°C on New Year's Eve.

And I'm pretty sure no one in Chicago wants a repeat of last year.

I only got 13,000 steps yesterday owing to Christmas Eve dinner and some ill-timed rain. (Perhaps 25,000 may have been too ambitious?) This included two walks around Half Moon Bay State Beach:

I even shot some video, in the stiff breeze:

Later, we went to Christmas Eve dinner, where poor Roger once again had to wear a Santa suit:

While we're getting ready to celebrate the birth of Baby X this Xmas, links are once again stacking up in my inbox. Like these:

• Someone made a transit map of Westeros.
• Someone explained the history of Chinese food and Jewish Christmas.
• Someone hacked Sony, but Schneier isn't convinced it was North Korea.
• Someone leaked the CIA's travel guide.
• Someone bumped uglies with a 737 at LaGuardia.
• Someone convinced American and United to allow free flight changes today.

That might be it for The Daily Parker today.

A friend upgraded my wardrobe. Specifically, I received a real bow tie for my concert tuxedo to replace my ugly clip-on. I am grateful; the clip-on was really ugly.

However, the friend may not have realized that I have never tied a bow tie before. And so, last Saturday before our Messiah concert at the Harris Theater, I attempted to learn:

Fortunately, one of the other singers helped me out before we went on, so the end result didn't suck too badly:

Unfortunately, I had to take it off after the concert. That means I'll have to learn how to do it all over again—I hope before our next concert in March.