Events

With today's high temperature at O'Hare (29°C) coming in slightly above forecast—as it has almost every day this week—I can now state with confidence that 2020's was the hottest summer ever in Chicago. By my figures, we hit an average daily temperature of 24.8°C, 0.2°C above the record set in 1955. The string of 6 days above 32°C from the 23rd to the 28th put us over the top, so that even the weekend's milder temperatures couldn't bring us back under the line. Congratulations? Oh, and this is the blog's...

Today is the last day of meteorological summer, and by my math we really have had the warmest summer ever in Chicago. (More on that tomorrow, when it's official.) So I, for one, am happy to see it go. And yet, so many things of note happened just in the last 24 hours: Greg Sargent says the president's "vile tweetstorm" yesterday "reveals the ugly core of his 'law and order' campaign." On that point, lawyer Nick Carmody suggests that the civil unrest the president has fomented "is one of the greatest...

I'm glad I took a long walk yesterday and not today, because of this: In other news: State health officials warn that suburban Cook County (the immediate suburbs surrounding Chicago) has experienced a resurgence in Covid-19 cases, and placed it and 29 other counties on warning that social restrictions could resume next week. Moreover, Covid-19 leads in a massive wave of excess deaths reported by the Cook County Medical Examiner this week. Suicides, homicides, and overdoses are also at near-record...

All autocratic regimes suffer from endemic incompetence. It's easy to see why: if you can't contradict the autocrat, the government is only as competent as he is. When the autocrat is a pathological narcissist, you get another level of stupid on top. People work in governments like this for one reason only: to get rich. And they get rich by stealing from the public. Competence only gets in the way of the grift. So here we find ourselves 65 days from an election in which the incumbent claims to have the...

Today is not only a Saturday, it's also the first day all week under 32°C. So I took a little 26 km walk around the neighborhood. It felt good, and I maintained a Chicago Marathon-qualifying pace throughout. I also underestimated my water needs by half, so I've drunk about two liters since I got home. And now, I must go to the store. Yay.

I'm sitting at my desk waiting for my work laptop to finish updating, a process now in its 24th minute, with "Working on updates 25%" on the screen for the past 5. Very frustrating; I have things to do today; and if I'd known how long it would take (I'm looking at you, help desk), I would have started the update when I left this evening. So, all right, I'll read a few things: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has resigned "for health reasons" merely four days after becoming the longest-serving PM....

As of Saturday, it looked like we might break the record for hottest summer ever (average daily temperature 24.7°C) in Chicago, set way back in 1955. If the today's forecast holds, however, we will merely tie the record. This is actually a good-news, bad-news thing. The good news is: (a) we came just a bit short of breaking the record (36.7°C) for August 26th, and (b) a cold front will push through tomorrow evening, dropping temperatures into the high 20s for the weekend. You know? I'm OK with not...

There's a lot going on today, what with the Republican National Convention celebrating the apocalypse they desperately want, but a few things outside of that also happened: The Lake County Sheriff has arrested 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse for killing two people in a protest in Kenosha, Wis., last night. Eyewitness reports suggest Rittenhouse shot three people who tried to disarm him after he'd already shot at a few others. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has a pretty convincing explanation for...

Conductors on the heavy-rail line I take downtown twice a week haven't asked me for my ticket all summer. Apparently they're pissed at Metra, the agency that runs our commuter trains: Metra, which is struggling financially during the pandemic, said Union Pacific’s refusal to send conductors into the train cars is costing the commuter rail system $1 million a month in lost ticket revenue. Union Pacific, which operates the UP North, Northwest and West lines, is not allowing conductors back into the aisles...

Chicago's key Covid-19 metric, the 7-day rolling average positivity rate, ticked above 5% yesterday, as it's been near the 5% threshold for a couple of weeks. It rose from 4% to 5% between July 19th and 30th, suggesting that relaxed discipline has led to more infections. Today Governor JB Pritzker announced stricter policies requiring masks to protect restaurant workers: [The] new statewide restaurant and bar policy requiring all patrons to wear a mask while interacting with waitstaff and other...