Events

The University of Illinois has a stash of aerial photographs of Illinois from 1938 and 1939, including one that shows the house I grew up in under construction. The photo at left is 1938; at right is 2001: Here's a larger crop of the 1938 photo overlaid with a 2010 image: Natives of the town will probably recognize it instantly. Here's an extreme close-up with the foundation of my house highlighted: I also looked at photos of Chicago from the same batch, and after posting this, I will look for more...

Nobel-laureate economist Paul Krugman lays out a simple demonstration of how an increase in the global average temperature necessarily leads to more extreme weather events without eliminating other effects: Now suppose that a warming trend shifts the whole probability distribution to the right — which is what we mean when we talk about climate change. Then the result looks like this: What happens is that the right tail gets fatter: the probability, and hence the frequency, of extreme events goes up. Two...

A micromort is the amount of risk that equals a one-in-one million probability of death. Drinking two beers, smoking 1.4 cigarettes, traveling 6 minutes by canoe, and living for two days in New York are all 1-millimort activities. (Intentionally jumping out of a perfectly-flyable airplane, which some people call "skydiving," is a 17-millimort activity.) This unit does not pip my favorite unit of measure, the millihelen, which is the amount of beauty required to launch one ship. (Negative helen values...

The Tribune reported this morning that the 66 mm of snow we got yesterday set a record, by pushing this winter's total snowfall above 125 cm for the 4th winter in a row. We've never had four consecutive 125 cm winters before. Mazel tov, Chicago. In the same blog the Tribune also explained why wind chills seem warmer than 10 years ago: the formula changed in 2001. So a wind chill of -40° in 2000 might only be -20° now. Doesn't that make you feel better?

Looks like my exertions yesterday were nearly pointless: For a lagniappe, they gave the snow behind my car an extra push, making me wonder how I will be able to get out of the spot at all: At least there's Zipcar if I need it.

I dug my car out of a meter-high snowbank yesterday. Flash forward to this morning: Fortunately, the overnight snowfall (about 5 cm so far) is light and fluffy, which I can remove in just a few minutes. The 40 minutes I spent yesterday involved moving hunks of ice and frozen, gray slush. And, as a friend pointed out, it is February.

I mentioned yesterday that having my car snowed in didn't bother me much. I do have to use it eventually, however. Today the temperature got above freezing, the warmest we expect it to be for the next week, at least. So, after 40 minutes with a shovel and a spade, I went from this: To this I will now shower. And nap.

The storm this week forced 20,000 flight cancellations costing $120-150 million: American Airlines, the country’s third-largest carrier, took the biggest hit after high winds and ice closed its Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport hub Tuesday. American, along with American Eagle and its other commuter operations, racked up more than 5,300 cancellations for the week, according to FlightAware, which tracks airline performance. Assuming that 10 percent to 30 percent of stranded customers choose to not...

Or, why I will never work somewhere where I need to commute by car: A jack-knifed semi blocked all lanes of the northbound Edens Expressway north of the Willow exit for more than an hour this morning. The accident at one point backed up traffic to Fullerton on the Kennedy Expressway. (Photo: WGN-TV) I might need to go downtown today, which will require one of the 7 bus routes or 3 El lines that pass within a kilometer of my house. And this does not bother me at all:

The city still hasn't plowed all the side streets, of which Chicago has almost 7,000 km, so I'll cut them some slack. Here's Oakdale between Broadway and Clark last night: This morning, Commonwealth between Fullerton and Belden: