The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Things to read

A couple of articles floated through my awareness today:

Happy reading.

 

Craft Brewery Central

By one measure, Chicago is the Craft Beer Capital of the U.S.:

Craft brewers in the Chicago area occupy an estimated 1.6 million square feet of commercial real estate, more than any other metro area in the country, according to a report from Seattle-based brokerage Colliers International. The area also has the second-most craft breweries with 144, behind only Portland, Ore.'s 196.

And craft beer—defined as being made by small, independent brewers—is still growing here. Just four U.S. markets have more breweries in the planning stages than the 39 in Chicago. (This was Colliers' first report on the subject, making comparisons to past years difficult.)

Never has Chicago had so many breweries. The last peak was around the start of the 20th century, when the city had about 60 small breweries that combined to produce about 100 million gallons of beer a year (compared with 12.4 million in 2014). Prohibition wiped out most of them. The few that survived into the middle of the century were either purchased by rivals or shut down, victims of national beer brands that gobbled up much of the market by selling less-expensive beer in cans.

I have expressed concern about the big guys buying up the craft guys, but this new statistic warms my heart. We might still have craft beer in Chicago come 2050...

Missing my Fitbit numbers

For the last couple of days, I've missed my 10,000-step goal by 100 to 500 steps. This is why:

Yesterday Chicago got its biggest November snowfall in 120 years; today it's well below freezing. Walking is treacherous at best for bipeds and uncomfortable for quadrupeds. So today might also be a miss.

I haven't missed three days in a row since March 5th-7th—when, not coincidentally, we had a miserable, snowy week. Winter is hard on fitness.

Good, bad, and ugly, episode 314

The good: A new study shows that drinking 3-5 cups of coffee a day has measurable health benefits.

The bad: A black resident of Santa Monica, Calif., got hauled out of her apartment at gunpoint by 19 police officers after a white neighbor reported someone trying to break in.

The ugly: Yale law student Omar Aziz writes about the soul of a Jihadist.

And the neutral, which could be ugly: forecasters predict 15-30 cm of snow in Chicago tomorrow night into Saturday morning.

Strongest El Niño in history

The L.A. Times reports today that temperatures in the Eastern Pacific are far higher than previous El Niño events:

Temperatures in this key area of the Pacific Ocean rose to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the week of Nov. 11. That exceeds the highest comparable reading for the most powerful El Niño on record, when temperatures rose 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the average the week of Thanksgiving in 1997.

The 5.4 degree Fahrenheit recording above the average temperature is the highest such number since 1990 in this area of the Pacific Ocean, according to the National Weather Service.

But the center’s deputy director, Mike Halpert, cautioned against reading too much into the record-breaking weekly temperature data.

El Niño has so far been underperforming in other respects involving changes in the atmosphere important to the winter climate forecast for California, he said.

One example: tropical rainfall has not extended from the International Date Line and eastward, approaching South America, as it did by this time in 1997.

In Illinois, our temperatures in the first two weeks of November are also much higher as well. But:

In the last two big events, the above-average temperatures did not appear until December, January, and February. So what does it mean if this November is unlike 1982 and 1997? It just means that no two El Niño events behave in exactly the same way.

We don't know how winter will go; but so far, it feels a lot more like early October than mid-November.

 

Too much to read

I'm totally swamped today, so here are the things I haven't read yet:

Twenty minutes until my next meeting.

 

Unseasonably warm

The normal high temperature in Chicago on November 2nd is 12°C, which we aleady hit between 7 and 8 am today. Yesterday Chicago got to 22°C at O'Hare and 23°C at Midway, with similar temperatures expected to continue through Thursday.

These temperatures make more sense mid-September than at the beginning of November. But we'll take them anyway. Temperatures will go back to normal Friday and Saturday, with frost expected Saturday night.

Might have to get up early

A G3-class solar storm (i.e., a big one) is predicted to hit the earth tonight, generating category 7 aurorae, which are rarely seen on earth:

Auroral activity will be high(++). Weather permitting, highly active auroral displays will be visible overhead from Inuvik, Yellowknife, Rankin and Igaluit, to Portland OR, Cheyenne, Lincoln, Springfield, and New York City, and visible low on the horizon as far south as Carson City, Oklahoma City, and Raleigh.

Here's the prediction map from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks:

But here's the observed aurora right now:

So, while the aurora isn't yet visible in Chicago, the solar storm might propel enough material into our ionosphere that we could see some auroral displays in a few hours—or tomorrow. The prediction for Tuesday calls for displays overhead central Wisconsin which would be visible down to St. Louis, weather permitting.

The only place in Chicago dark enough to see them is the lakefront. Parker and I might have to walk over there tomorrow evening.

Updates as events warrant...