Ah, I can finally take a few minutes to read through my backlog of articles, which have a common theme coming off this past week's events:
That, plus a tour of the Laguintas Brewery this afternoon (the one here, not the one in Petaluma), ought to keep me busy.
A high-pressure dome of hot, humid air is parked over the middle of the U.S. right now, driving temperatures up and heat indices up higher. But here in downtown Chicago, something weird happened this afternoon.
Around 1pm, a line of thunderstorms came down Lake Michigan from the north. Just before then, it was 33°C at O'Hare with a heat index close to 38°C. Then, within fifteen minutes, this happened:
Note the green lin snaking from Gary, Ind., in the southeast around to Crystal Lake, Ill., in the northwest. That's an interface between cool air coming off the lake and the hot, muggy air surrounding it. And it's still raining there; here's the radar image from 3:50:
So right now, it's 25°C in Gary, 24°C in Lansing, Ill. (near Gary), and 33°C in Joliet (near the + sign on the radar images).
Weird. And welcome, at least in the Loop. But the temperature is climbing again as the thunderstorms make their way deeper into Indiana. And tomorrow's forecast predicts more humid heat. Bleah.
Much of the central U.S. is bracing for the worst heat wave since 2013:
Temperatures [in Chicago] Thursday are expected to reach 34°C and 37°C on Friday, with humidity levels creating a heat index that feels more like 38-42°C, according to Kevin Donofrio, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The heat wave will continue through the weekend, with temperatures only a few digits lower during the day Saturday and Sunday and remaining around 25°C and even 28-29°C overnight, Donofrio said. Temperatures are expected to drop early next week.
It's already starting. I'm heading to Wrigley Field in a couple of hours, and the temperature has already hit 30°C at O'Hare with a heat index of 31.6°C.
WGN has an informative graphic explaining why this is happening.
From AVWeb: one of the world's two remaining B-29 Superfortresses flew for the first time this weekend after being grounded for more than 60 years.
From CityLab: Nice's surveillance network is extensive—possibly too extensive to do any good.
From New Republic:
Over in the Atlantic, James Fallows just adds it to the list of things historians will probably wonder about (at #44) and why it matters (#45).
Cranky Flier reports on a different batch of corruption after United Airlines released documents showing how its bid in Newark, N.J., for a new hangar went south. Literally.
At New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan live-blogged day 1 of the Republican National Convention.
At The New Yorker, Jane Mayer talked with Tony Schwartz, the man who wrote Trump's Art of the Deal.
And here at home, from Crain's Chicago Business, how former governor Jim Edgar has gone from coaching current governor Bruce Rauner gently to calling him out in public.
Pitchfork was a good way to spend most of Saturday (and the weather was perfect). Hanging out with friends and running errands was a good way to spend yesterday. And now I'm back at work.
With the Republican National Convention going on this week, I expect I'll have regular posts*. But it's starting to look like July might be my slowest month for posting since I finished my MBA.
* For instance, what does it say about the Republican Party that Cleveland felt it necessary to quadruple its police force for the week?
Because I need to read all of these and have to do my actual job first:
I'll get to these this evening. I hope.
Chicago saw the end of an era today:
The final Chicago-made Oreo cookies will roll off the line Friday, ending the iconic cookie's decadeslong run of delighting consumers and providing good-paying union jobs on the Southwest Side.
The last Oreo line at the Mondelez International plant is shutting down as the global snack and confectionary company shifts some of its production to Mexico. As part of the move announced last summer, the company said it would be laying off about half of the plant's 1,200 workers; many of them are already gone. The Chicago plant will continue to make other products, like BelVita breakfast biscuits and Mini Chips Ahoy cookies. Oreo cookies will continue to be made at three other plants in the U.S. — just not at the brick bakery at 7300 S. Kedzie Ave.
In making the decision, Mondelez executives said they could save $46 million a year by installing the so-called "lines of the future" in Salinas, Mexico, rather than Chicago.
You can get a lot of Double-Stuf for $46m.
Today marks the 49th anniversary of the most odiferous disaster ever to strike the shores of Chicago:
[D]uring the 1930s, these alewives got into Lake Michigan. They weren’t much of a problem because the bigger fish–like the trout–would eat them. But the sea lamprey came along and ate the trout. Sea lampreys didn’t eat alewives, so suddenly, the lake had all these alewives and no predators.
Pretty soon there are alewives filling the lake. That’s what today’s story is about—July 7, 1967. There are so many alewives around Chicago that it’s become national news. Even Time magazine is talking about it.
Of course, those alewives would be decaying, and you can imagine the smell—well, you probably don’t want to. The flies would come in, and the beaches would be a mess. The city would have to use tractors and bulldozers to clear off the beaches.
Nobody knew how many dead alewives there were. Experts said hundreds of millions, maybe a billion. A guy in a plane over the lake saw a ribbon of drifting dead alewives 40 miles long.
I remember these die-offs continuing until the late 1970s. Today, we have salmon in the lake, so fewer alewives. At least, until the carp get here...
It's nice to have a friend with a boat. You get to see this kind of thing on Google Timeline:
Photos won't be spectacular because the lighting kind of sucked (high thin cirrostratus layer, light was cold and gray). But I'll post some when I'm able.
As I offloaded the photos from Windy City Ribfest from my phone, this was in the same batch:
That's a steak and ale pie from The Greyhound Pub in Aldbury, Hertfordshire, this past Sunday. And it was much better than any of the ribs I had this evening.