Cassie only got an 8-minute walk this morning, and she's not likely to get a longer one today. Officially at O'Hare it's -15°C, and here at IDTWHQ it's -13°C. The forecast promises the temperature will remain right around there until tonight before sliding down to -18°C by 3am, and -21°C Tuesday morning around 5am. Brr.
My Garmin app tells me I'm on day 22 of a 30-day "walk streak" of getting a walking activity of at least 1.6 km every day. We'll see about that. Cassie won't be able to join me, poor dear, because it's not safe for her to be out longer than 10 minutes at this temperature.
The temperature will get back up to -4°C or so when it's time to come home from day camp on Wednesday, though. And I'll make sure to give her extra walkies next weekend.
We've known for about a week that a mass of cold air was bearing down on us. It formed over Siberia, passed over the North Pole and Canada, and has now reached Chicago.
Cassie and I went out just now for 22 minutes, and in that time the temperature dropped 0.4°C (0.7°F), which may not sound like a lot until you do the math (1.2°C/2.2°F per hour). And it will continue doing so until early Monday morning, plateauing but not rising during daylight hours:
Fortunately for us (but unfortunately for a lot of insects and plants), we have almost no snow on the ground after two days of above-freezing weather. Without the snow to lower its albedo, the ground will absorb the abundant sunlight to keep us warmer than we otherwise would be:
The dump of arctic air will be in full swing Sunday night with a lobe of roughly -27° to -30°C 850 mb air waiting in the wings just to our north and west, and this will traverse northern Illinois fully on Monday night. From a climatology perspective, this is just about as cold as we`ve seen (at 850 mb) in the nearby upper air database (Quad Cities and Lincoln, IL). Out of curiosity, went back and took a look at the arctic outbreak from this time last year (January 14 - 17), which featured low temperatures in the -5° to -15°F range and wind chills solidly down towards -30°F (and even lower than that on short time periods). 850 mb temperatures in this case were actually notably "warmer", generally around -20°C. They key difference was a widespread and dense snowpack which we obviously don`t have this time around, which just goes to show the power of snowpacks in altering these arctic airmasses. In this case, little/snow in place, even amidst near-record cold just off the deck, the peak of this arctic episode looks to wind up a bit under where we found ourselves one year ago.
Also, yesterday we had a late-March-like 8.3°C high temperature at O'Hare, and the temperatures should go above zero again on Thursday. The coldest normal temperatures in January occur on the 23rd to the 25th, so this is pretty much right on time.
The worst part of this will fall on Cassie. She only has the two fur coats her parents gave her, and she has no sense of cold. I've explained to her that she's only going to get 5-minute walks from Sunday to Tuesday. She responded by rolling on her back and demanding a belly-rub. I'm envious.
The temperature at Inner Drive Technology World HQ peeked above freezing a few minutes ago:
We last had an above-freezing temperature at 4:25pm Sunday. We expect above-freezing temperatures during the day tomorrow, too. And then, around 2am Saturday morning, the forecast says the temperature will start sliding down to -20°C by 5am Sunday. We expect to have temperatures below -10°C from Saturday morning until early Wednesday morning.
Right now, however, we have clear skies and lots of sun. Time to take Cassie for a half-hour walk.
Yesterday, the temperature at Inner Drive Technology World HQ scraped along at -11°C early in the morning before "warming" up to -7.5°C around 3pm. Cassie and I got a 22-minute walk around then and she seemed fine. Today the pattern completely inverted. I woke up during the warmest part of the day: 7am, -8°C. Around 8am the temperature started dropping and now hovers around -11°C again—slightly colder than the point where I limit Cassie to 15 minutes outside. She just doesn't feel cold, apparently, and would happily stay outside until she passed out from hypothermia.
So, bottom line, I'm in no hurry to take her for her lunchtime walk.
Besides, I've got a lot of interesting stories to read:
- Former Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff explains why he's a liberal, and why you should be, too.
- Jesse Wegman and Lee Drutman have some ideas about how to fix the United States' "two-party problem:" proportional representation.
- Block Club Chicago lists 10 of its investigations into the Chicago Transit Authority's mismanagement under its outgoing boss, Dorval Carter.
- Chuck Marohn explains why building tons of new housing in old, dense cities like San Francisco and NYC doesn't work as well as people hope.
- Two Illinois state representatives introduced a bill in the state House to decriminalize sex work, which would dramatically increase their safety and security.
- British computer scientist Peter Kirstein died five years ago, and left behind a delightful essay on the beginnings of the Internet—and the Internet's first-ever password.
- James Poniewozik has a fun history of TV show opening titles that will waste a few minutes of your afternoon (in a good way).
Finally, yet another coyote found his way into a store, this time an Aldi in Humboldt Park. Almost 17 years ago one of his ancestors tried to hide in a Quiznos sandwich shop in the Loop. The result was the same for both: removal and relocation. Block Club says yesterday's incident involved "rescuing" the coyote from the Aldi, but that seems pretty harsh. Like, was the coyote trying to go to Whole Foods instead? They're usually not that bougie.
Cassie and I survived our 20-minute, -8°C walk a few minutes ago. For some reason I feel like I need a nap. Meanwhile:
Finally, I want to end with Ross Douthat's latest (subscriber-only) newsletter, taking Vivek Ramaswamy to task for suggesting American kids need more intense competition in order for the US to stay ahead of its peers. I'll just focus on one paragraph, where he suggests Ramaswamy's end goal may not be a place we really want to go:
[T]he atmosphere he’s describing in South Korea, the frantic cycle of educational competition, isn’t just a seeming contributing factor to that country’s social misery; it’s almost certainly a contributing factor to the literal collapse of South Korea’s population, the steep economic rise that Munger describes giving way to an equally steep demographic decline. So for societies no less than individuals, it appears possible to basically burn out on competition, to cram-school your way to misery, pessimism and collapse — something that any advocate of intensified meritocratic competition would do well to keep in mind.
As I have more and more contact with kids born after 1995, I find so many of them who either have flat personalities, an inability to function independently, and an alarming lack of emotional resilience, or who have vitality, intelligence, and an ability to function in the world but no ambition. The last 30 years have crushed the elite-adjacent kids whose parents want them to enter the elite, whatever they think "elite" means. As a kid who traveled alone on public transit to Downtown Chicago at age 7, and managed to get from O'Hare security to LAX security without help by age 8, I feel sorry for these incompetent, despondent children.
The temperature yesterday got all the way up to 2°C at 2:30pm before plummeting overnight to -13°C just before dawn this morning. That means we had the highest and lowest temperatures of 2025 within a single 16-hour period. At least this far below freezing, we don't have all the slush and squish that leads to a towel looking like this after just one walk:
It gets better. The forecast for Tuesday night calls for even lower temperatures, with Wednesday morning being too cold to walk Cassie to day camp (-10°C is her lower limit for a 20-minute walk). But then it'll go back up to 4°C on Friday.
Of course, Wednesday is the mid-point of winter, and Chicago always gets cold in January. Plus, the conditions that lead to these really bracing temperatures bring clear skies along with them, which we do like this time of year. We take the good with the bad here.
I've just finished updating the Weather Now gazetteer, the database of geographical information that connects weather information to locations. This involved re-importing 283 countries and 4,494 administrative divisions from the National Geospatial Information Agency, plus 25,668 weather stations from the National Climate Data Center and 20,166 airports from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Most of these places already existed in the gazetteer, so they just got freshened up from the latest releases of the NCDC and FAA data. And, as I previously complained, the Country and Division records got their correct GEC identifiers.
Next up: a bunch of minor bugs and enhancements on the Place Info and Airport Info pages, so you can actually see the updated geographical data.
First, though, I'm going to take Cassie on a 30-minute walk. It's overcast and gloomy, but the temperature has held at just under 1°C for the past few hours. We won't have the chance to spend 30 minutes outside again until next Thursday if the forecast -18°C temperatures occur.
We've gotten about 4 cm of snow so far today, with more coming down until this evening. Cassie loves it; I have mixed feelings. At least the temperature has gone up a bit, getting up to -0.6°C for the first time since around this time on Monday.
Elsewhere:
- Federal Judge Aileen Cannon (R-SDFL) got overruled again, this time after her corrupt effort to block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on January 6th.
- George Will bemoans Congress ceding so much of its authority to the office of the President, especially given who will take that office in ten days.
- Just three corrupt Chicago cops will cost the city almost $34 million in settlements, making me wonder why we don't pay those settlements out of the police pension fund.
- Pamela Paul objects to historians opining about politics, which is actually one of the things they've always done.
- Five years after the pandemic began, we still haven't gotten back in the habit of being out in public, according to Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.
Finally, Maplewood Brewing has started expanding its Logan Square taproom into the other half of the building it occupies. I don't get there often, but I enjoy going back. Can't wait to see what their restaurant looks like when it's done. I also need to get to Cherry Circle Room or the CAA Drawing Room soon, as it looks like the management transition from Land & Sea to Boka may change some things.
Despite getting back to a relative normal in 2023, 2024 seemed to revert back to how things went in 2020—just without the pandemic. Statistically, though, things remained steady, for the most part:
- I posted 480 times on The Daily Parker, 20 fewer than in 2023 and 17 below the long-term median. January and July had the most posts (48) and April and December the fewest (34). The mean of 40.0 was slightly lower than the long-term mean (41.34), with a standard deviation of 5.12, reflecting a mixed posting history this year.
- Flights went up slightly, to 17 segments and 25,399 flight miles (up from 13 and 20,541), the most of either since 2018:
- I visited 3 countries (Germany, the UK, and France) and 5 US states (Washington, North Carolina, Arizona, California, Texas). Total time traveling: 189 hours (up from 156).
- Cassie got 369 hours of walks (down from 372) and at least that many hours of couch time.
- Fitness numbers for 2024: 4,776,451 steps and 4,006 km (average: 13,050 per day), up from 4.62m steps and 3,948 km in 2023. Plus, I hit my step goal 343 times (341 in 2023). I also did my second-longest walk ever on October 19th, 43.23 km.
- Driving went way down. My car logged only 3,812 km (down from 5,009) on 54 L of gasoline (down from 87), averaging 1.4 L/100 km (167 MPG). I last filled up April 8th, and I still have half a tank left. Can I make it a full year without refueling?
- Total time at work: 1,807 hours at my real job (down from 1,905) and 43 hours on consulting and side projects, including 841 hours in the office (up from 640), plus 114 hours commuting (up from 91). For most of the summer we had 3-days-a-week office hours, but starting in November, that went back to 1 day a week.
- The Apollo Chorus consumed 225 hours in 2024, with 138 hours rehearsing and performing (cf. 247 hours in 2023).
In all, fairly consistent with previous years, though I do expect a few minor perturbations in 2025: less time in the office, less time on Apollo, and more time walking Cassie.
Cassie got a Christmas present from one of my friends:
I can only imagine the kind of joy she felt as she paraded around the house showing everyone her new toy. Perhaps it helped that I gave her sardines instead of green beans with her kibble for dinner. We all had a really nice Christmas, and Cassie had a fantastic one.