It turns out, I only got half the story about today's weather. The 13.3°C figure is only the high maximum record for O'Hare, whose records only go back to November 1958. But the official record for Chicago goes back to 1871. The offical record high maximum was 17.1°C, set in 1876. O'Hare didn't break that record today, but Midway—where our official weather station was from the 1930s until 1958—might have tied it.
We might, however, get the high minimum temperature tonight. That record, 6.1°C, has lasted since 1886. Last evening's low was 8.9°C, around what tonight's forecast calls for.
I should have mentioned, 15.6°C is our normal daily maximum for April 17th.
Forecasters predicted that Chicago would break its old record high (technically "high maximum") temperature of 13.3°C today. Well, we just hit that temperature, so let's see how high it goes.
For what it's worth, I walked from class to my client today. In many parts of the world that's not extraordinary. In February in Chicago, though...
Update, 11:10 CT: 11 am temperature officially 14.4°C, new record. How high will it fly? (Sorry...)
Update, 12:05 CT: now 15°C, another new record.
Update, 13:00 CT: 15.6°C.
The numbers yesterday turned out to be correct, but there was one aspect of the thaw I forgot to mention. We've had snow on the ground in Chicago since just before New Year's Eve. Just 36 hours ago, O'Hare had 27 cm of the stuff, and all of it melted by dinner time yesterday. Welcome to Chicago's fifth season: Mud.
The official score won't be in until past midnight, but it looks like the temperature at O'Hare today topped 13°C—about 33°C warmer than Thursday morning's -20°C. It's quite a relief. And almost all the snow is gone.
In celebration, Parker and I will now take our second long walk of the day.
Chicago O'Hare just recorded a temperature of 4.4°C, the warmest it's been since December 30th.
That is all.
After 31 days of snow cover, 40 days without a temperature above 10°C, 67 days without four consecutive days above 5°C, and not one night above freezing since December 29th, Chicago is finally, finally getting warmer weather:
Warming in coming days—a slow process at first—leads to a 50-degree [Fahrenheit] temperature increase by Saturday afternoon. The day may produce the first 50-degree high here since late December.
(Skilling wrote that around 11pm CST yesterday when the temperature was heading down to its overnight low of -19°C.)
Here's the National Weather Service temperature plot for the next 48 hours, predicting a rise from -9°C up to 7°C by noon Saturday:
I really can't wait. Really. I'm wearing long johns under my suit right now, which is just plain wrong.
Update, 3:25pm CST: Ahhh. The temperature has already risen 15°C in the past 12 hours.
Western Europe also. The snowfall has paralyzed (paralysed?) the entire country:
South-east England has the worst snow it has seen for 18 years, causing all London buses to be pulled from service and the closure of Heathrow's runways.
The Met Office has issued an extreme weather warning for England, Wales and parts of eastern Scotland.
Up to four inches is forecast to fall later on Monday in south-east England, and up to 12 inches in the north-east. Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "We are doing everything in our power to ensure services, road, rail and airports are open as quickly as possible, and we are continuing to monitor this throughout the day."
(After which Conservative Party leader David Cameron asked if Brown still believes that the freeze-thaw cycle has ended.)
All of my colleages at my client's office in Chicago—where we've had snow on the ground without interruption all year—wonder what the fuss is about. The visiting Londoners reminded us that the UK probably has fewer snowplows than a typical Chicago ward, and complained that the one snow day they're likely to see all year doesn't affect them (the client's London office is closed today).
In unrelated news, the cheeky rodent came out wearing sunglasses today, so if woodchucks are any good at predicting the weather, we'll have another 6 weeks of snow on the ground. (Malverne Mel, on Long Island, did not see his shadow. The cognoscenti know Mel's a better forecaster.)
Update: Le Monde has photos from Paris and Madrid.
Even though it's finally above freezing at the moment in Chicago, we did make it through the entire month of January without having a single above-freezing night. It has been the coldest January in 24 years, and it looks like mid-February we'll see some more. Enough already.
The US Geological Survey just reported a 4.5-magnitude earthquake in downtown Seattle, where the time is about 6:15 am. That'll wake you up. No damage or injuries reported yet—it was a minor earthquake—but still, what a way to start the day.
