The Daily Parker

As forecast, the temperature dropped steadily from 3:30 pm Monday until finally bottoming out at -5.6°C (22°F) just after sunset yesterday. It's crept up slowly since then, up to -2.5°C (27.5°F) a few minutes ago. C'mon, you can do it! Just a little farther to reach freezing! Because the forecast for tomorrow morning (-13°C/9°F) does not look great. At least we'll see the sun for a few hours.

You know what else is cold? My feelings toward the OAFPOTUS. I'm not alone:

• Peter Hamby looks back on the OAFPOTUS's recent election endorsements and wonders why any sane Republican would want one.
• Paul Krugman draws a straight line between Calvin Coolidge and the OAFPOTUS, as neither president believed that the US government has any business helping disaster victims. (NB: all the presidents between them emphatically did.)
• Matt Ford chuckles quietly at the brilliance of Costco's lawsuit to claw back the taxes they've paid under the OAFPOTUS's illegal tariff policies.
• Amanda Nelson continues her examination of the more unhinged parts of Project 2025 that the OAFPOTUS and his droogs are actually implementing, looking at the ongoing degradation of the Federal Trade Commission under Adam Candeub.
• Todd Zwillich gives a thumbs-up to US Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and the other lawmakers with intelligence and military backgrounds whose November 19th video teed up the OAFPOTUS's and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's self-owns on the law of war.
• Matt Yglesias reminds both parties that immigration is good for the United States, so cut out both the talk of "remigration" and all the ridiculous land acknowledgements.
• Jeff Maurer laments the decline of comedy movies, and offers six theories about why they died.

Finally, today is the 60th anniversary of The Beatles releasing Rubber Soul in the UK. It's always been one of my favorite albums, and not just from The Beatles. I finished re-watching the 5th season of Mad Men a few nights ago, so I've been trying to put myself back in the 1960s to imagine what revelations the 1965 and 1966 Beatles albums would have been (Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver)—not to mention how much the Fab Four's own sound changed in that 12-month period between 6 August 1965 and 5 August 1966.

Before listening to Rubber Soul one more time, though, I have a dog to walk.

As the cold air mass to the north of us drifts southeast, Chicago has gotten colder. Today's high temperature was at midnight, both at Inner Drive Technology World HQ and at O'Hare, though the National Weather Service has teased us with predictions of above-freezing temperatures tomorrow, followed by the coldest day since February 20th.

Cassie may not get a proper walk on Thursday until I pick her up from school. (Heck, I might not either.) At least being at school will give her some time to bounce around like a dog.

This makes me nervous. Usually this early we get some snow and it melts after a few days. But some years, like 2013-14, we get snow that won't ever leave. The record for consecutive days with 25 mm of snow on the ground was 1978-79, with 98 days. The winter of 2013-14 comes in 4th at 80 days, but the recency effect makes it feel worse.

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 flight restrictions across the country during the country’s longest government shutdown. More than 1.63 million travelers were expected to pass through O’Hare during the seven-day Thanksgiving period through Monday.

Sunday is expected to be the peak travel day at O’Hare, with up to 290,000 passengers arriving. The snow is expected to fall through Sunday morning, snarling travel for those returning home from Thanksgiving. Another snow system could move in Monday night.

The Chicago area could see up to 10 inches (254 mm) of snow by the time the storms move out of the area, said National Weather Service meteorologist Kevin Donofrio.

Also according to the National Weather Service, "This was the greatest storm total snowfall since 10.8" (275 mm) fell from January 30-31, 2021."

Another round of snowfall is due tomorrow evening. I guess I won't be dining alfresco on my patio tonight:

And after running (or porpoising) through snow that comes up to her chest for an hour yesterday, Cassie had a relaxing evening:

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 that when the 6pm report comes out. About an hour after that, my big pot of beef stew will be ready. And the forecast predicts the snowfall should start to taper off after 2am and skies should clear up by tomorrow night.

Hey, it's the last two days of autumn. We were due.

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 10,000+ steps may come to an end tomorrow, but I'm not going to give up my 7-year streak of 70,000+ steps per week.

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.

I miss my old friend.

My new friend is pretty great, 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.

Between meetings and getting into the zone while fixing a bug, I worked straight through lunch and only got Cassie out around 4. So before my next meeting at 8pm, I've got a few minutes to catch up on all...this:

• Josh Marshall reflects on the 8 Democratic Senators (including one of mine, who is also the minority whip) making a deal with the Republicans, and says the next Congress must eliminate the paper filibuster and reform the Supreme Court.
• David Graham takes a more nuanced view. Krugman wants Democrats to hammer the Republicans on their unnecessary cruelty to Americans in need. Rubin says the word "moderate" lets people weasel out of being a "fighter" or a "defeatist."
• Adam Kinzinger is outraged that the OAFPOTUS has openly sold pardons, in contravention of literally everything the founders (and everyone since) stood for.
• Dan Williams lays out a strategy for confronting "highbrow misinformation."
• Calculated Risk, the blog that predicted the 2008 financial meltdown three years ahead of time, is starting to warn about the next financial meltdown from the inevitable cryptocurrency collapse.
• Matt Yglesias takes a break from the news to speculate about what would have happened had Italy joined the Central Powers in 1914.

And yesterday, as most people know, was the 50th anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking in Lake Superior.

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 like it not to freeze important bits of me off.

I'll have some photos from San Francisco later today. Right now I have to shovel my walkway again, then take Cassie for a 3 km walk so I get my steps in.