The Daily Parker

I've said it before: In Chicago, you're not allowed to complain about the cold until it's below 0°F. If you're too cold, you're just dressed incorrectly.

Well, we've now had 16 days that cold this season (including 4 in December), tying the horrible 1978-79 and 1976-77 winters for third place. Only two winters, one of them in the 19th century, had more days this cold.

To add insult, yesterday Anchorage, Alaska, had record-high warmth (9°C), and most of the state was warmer than Chicago. The dome of hot, high-pressure air over the North Pacific, probably caused by anthropogenic climate change, has been driving this.

So, when we have the coldest winter in 30 years, and when it's 28°C warmer in flippin' Alaska than in Chicago, we get to complain. And next week they're forecasting even colder weather for us.

Twelve days until I'm on a small island...twelve long, cold days...

Edited to clarify the record period.

Today we might get up to -10°C, but even though this part of January is normally the coldest bit of the year, it might continue to cool down over the next couple of weeks. The 8-14 day look-ahead suggests below-normal temperatures through the beginning of February. This winter is already 2°C below normal on average.

Plus, with the 150 mm of snow we got last night, we've now tied the winter of 1977-78 for third-snowiest-ever with a seasonal total of 1138 mm. It could be worse; parts of Michigan have gotten over 2540 mm of snow this year.

More snow is forecast for this week, too.

Two weeks to a little Caribbean island...two weeks...I can make it...

In two and a half weeks, I'll be on a beach doing nothing of value to anyone but myself. Meanwhile, here are all the things I won't have time to read until someday in the future:

• The NOAA Climate Prediction Center has forecast essentially normal temperatures for the Midwest during February, March, and April. This is the same organization that predicted normal temperatures for January, so, you know.
• In Chicago, when there is snow, there are dibs. The practice has become more objectionable than ever to people who presumably like the idea of shared public space.
• Europe has much better credit-card security than is generally available in the U.S. My bank issued me a European, chipped card—but only on request.
• A McDonald's restaurant in Queens has a chronic geriatric infestation.
• Here's a cool chart showing U.S. city population rankings since 1790. Detroit's line is particularly interesting.
• Rush Limbaugh lives in an epistemical bubble (but we all knew that).
• Does Alcoholics Anonymous block real treatment of alcoholism?
• Birds fly in V formations because they are spectacularly good at physics.

Now my long day continues...

Tomorrow will be quieter than today, I hope, or I might not get time to think until next week. I didn't miss these meanwhile:

• The corporations have won massively: network neutrality might be really and truly dead.
• Chicago has banned indoor "vaping", for some reason.
• Spend 100 seconds with the demon baby of New York.
• When a convention wants to come to your hotel, don't insult them.
• 9,135 out of 9,136 scientists agreee: global warming is happening.

Next meeting...

Just 120 hours ago, a polar vortex wandered into the center of North America and froze us solid. Less than an hour ago, at 8:39am CST, the official temperature at O'Hare hit 0°C—27°C warmer than 9am Monday morning. It's also the first time the temperature has gotten up to freezing since December 29th.

I've lived in Chicago for a long time, so I can say this graph is extraordinary (data from my demo at Weather Now:

Of course, with 250 mm of heavy, wet snow on the ground, rain in the forecast, and temperatures rising to 4°C today, we have new problems:

Patchy drizzle is to fall from the saturated atmosphere into a sub-freezing air mass Friday morning and early afternoon. This could produce slippery spots. But, the main event—a round of rain, likely to be heavy at times—arrives later Friday and continues into Friday night.

With the ground snow-covered and the soil below it frozen, the prospect of rain falling on a 250 mm snowpack at the same time temps surge above freezing is ominous. Moisture has nowhere to go in such a situation but to sit in pools or exit the area as run-off, a development which could produce some flooding.

But we're still glad to be shot of those incredibly cold temperatures. We've had 12 days below -18°C this year, a feat achieved in only three other winters since we started keeping score in 1871. Which brings up an interesting graph from Minnesota:

So even this year's bitter cold temperatures in the Midwest fit into a trend showing gradual moderating of Minneapolis weather. I would wager we could produce a similar chart for Chicago. Our -27°C reading Tuesday morning, after all, was still warmer than the record -33°C temperature I experienced (briefly) on 20 January 1985.

Wow did it seem warm this morning. I hope this week was the last of our super-frigid temperatures. Now we've just got to get through a few more months of snow.

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 .)

Sunrises are just starting to get earlier, but today's (7:18 CST) is only a few seconds earlier than the latest sunrise of the year on January 3rd. Even though the sunrise times creep earlier by seconds every day, sunsets start to get noticeably later: 16:39 today, 7 minutes later in a week, 25 minutes later in three weeks. January is cold and dark, but (on average) a few degrees warmer and 48 minutes longer when it ends than when it begins.

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

Illinois State Climatologist Jim Angel has his annual review of the state's weather for last year. Some highlights:

Based on the latest data, the statewide average temperature for 2013 in Illinois was 10.6°C (0.8°C below the 1981-2010 average). That is much cooler than 2012 when the statewide average temperature was 13.1°C.

The statewide average precipitation for 2013 in Illinois was 1112 mm (91 mm above the 1981-2010 average). The precipitation for the two halves of 2013 were very different. The precipitation for the first 6 months of 2013 totaled 736 mm and was 232 mm above average and the wettest January-June on record. The precipitation in the following 6 months of 2013 totaled 376 mm and was 141 mm below average and the 19th driest July-December on record.

By the way, the 2013 annual statewide average precipitation of 1112 mm was 329 mm wetter than 2012 when we received only 783 mm across the state.

Of course, there's art:

The temperature at O'Hare just reached -18°C for the first time since 11pm Sunday, 39 hours ago:

This was pretty much as forecast. The updated forecast predicts continued warming through the weekend (click for full size):

Perhaps by tomorrow, walking to the bus stop won't cause my eyelashes to freeze.

The temperature outside has gone up a whopping 0.9°C (to the tropical -23.6°C) since this morning. At O'Hare, it looks like the temperature bottomed out around 8am:

Let's hope it continues to rise. I'm really curious what this graph will look like in three days.

Just now, at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters:

(Compare with four years ago, when I bought the thermometer while sojourning in North Carolina.)

The official temperature at O'Hare is -27°C, breaking the previous record of -25°C set in 1988. We might even break the record low maximum temperature—the coldest high temperature ever on this date—of -18°C set in 1912.

I have not gone outside today, and until I take Parker out after he gets back from day care, I have not plans to do so.

At least the cold snap will be brief; they're forecasting above-freezing temperatures by Friday.