Cassie and I took a stroll through the local park. The maples are holding onto their leaves like winter will never come—though they seem to have given up on the chlorophyll for now:
Mid-November light is about the equivalent of the end of January, peaking around 29½° above the southern horizon at noon. That gives us hours of low, warm light on days like today.
Also, after walking about 32 km in total yesterday, I had no aching desire to walk at my usual pace, and Cassie didn't either.
My Brews & Choos buddy and I repeated our walk from 2023 along the North Branch Trail to Barnaby's of Northbook because they have really great pizza. This time we skipped all detours and went straight up from the trail to the restaurant, thereby saving over an hour of walking and, therefore, getting pizza sooner.
It helped that Chicago tied the record high temperature yesterday, hitting 21.7°C (71°F) between 2 and 3 pm. We started with cool and gloomy weather that got progressively better throughout the walk, contra 2023 where it started cool and sunny and turned grim as we got closer to our destination.
We also saw some wildlife. The buck stopped here:
I think the two of them just wanted some alone time and hoped the humans would continue on their ways. We didn't see any other deer on the walk, though, so clearly the others found more privacy than these two.
We get pretty sunsets this time of year:
We had a blast of lake-effect snow yesterday. This happens when cold air passes over a warm lake, pulling huge volumes of moisture from the water and freezing it into snow. The air got quite a bit below freezing yesterday morning, so the northeast winds picked up a lot of vapor from the 8°C water, which it promptly dropped on the city.
Through the spring and early summer we often hear that it's "cooler by the lake." But like the idea of "global warming," that hides a lot of nuance in a simple phrase. A slightly-more-accurate telling might be that it's "less variable by the lake." And yesterday we got an example of that.
At Inner Drive Technology WHQ, which is just over 2 km from Lake Michigan, yesterday was the first day since March 2nd during which the temperature didn't get above freezing. Yesterday the temperature ranged from -3.0°C to -0.5°C, with a dip during the second round of snowfall between 8 and 10 am. On March 2nd, it ranged from -5.4°C to -0.2°C.
Contrast with Chicago's official weather station at O'Hare (23.2 km from the lake), which last had a full day below freezing on February 21st. On March 2nd it did get down to -8°C, but it got up to 3°C, after hitting 14°C on February 28th. Similarly, yesterday O'Hare was both colder (-3.9°C) and warmer (2.2°C) than IDTWHQ, warm enough for all the snow to melt just a few hours after it fell.
Today's forecast promises above-freezing temperatures everywhere in the Chicago area today, rising to 18°C by Saturday. The snow doesn't bother me, but I hope the remaining ice melts from the sidewalks today.
Before I get to the best form of public transit available in the US, let's everyone say hello to my sister's dog, Omen:
Omen is a whippet. Good. (She's quite devo-ted to him.)
Anyway, this is how I got from the BART to the start of my 5.5 kilometer walk on Saturday:
If you take the Powell and Hyde line, the best part comes at the corner of Hyde and Lombard, at the top of Russian Hill. Just look at this view, and imagine seeing Alcatraz, Angel Island, and Tiburon directly ahead! (I have seen them from here. Trust me*.)
During my walk, I got to the end of the fog bank just before the Bay Bridge, and caught these cool lighting effects:
* OK, don't trust me. Here are two other photos I took from the same spot, the top one in April 2005, and the bottom one in May 2012:
As threatened yesterday, we got a few rounds of lake-effect snow overnight and this morning. Since not all the leaves have fallen yet, it still looks pretty:
And of course, one member of my household really, really, really likes a fresh snowfall:
Right now we've got about 100 mm on the ground. That will melt quickly as the forecast calls for above-freezing temperatures from tomorrow morning onward, reaching possibly 18°C on Saturday. I hope so, because I've got a 20 km hike planned for the day, and I'd like it not to freeze important bits of me off.
I'll have some photos from San Francisco later today. Right now I have to shovel my walkway again, then take Cassie for a 3 km walk so I get my steps in.
I don't enjoy taking 6 am flights, of course, but they do have advantages. I left my hotel at 6:11 am and was through SFO security by 6:25. That's even faster than last year!
I'm a little less enthused about this, however:
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Chicago IL
224 AM CST Sun Nov 9 2025
Northern Cook-Central Cook-Southern Cook-Eastern Will-
Including the cities of Chicago, Peotone, Northbrook, Crete,
Evanston, Lemont, Park Forest, Schaumburg, Cicero, Oak Park, La
Grange, Des Plaines, Oak Forest, Oak Lawn, Calumet City, Beecher,
Palatine, and Orland Park
224 AM CST Sun Nov 9 2025
...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO NOON CST
MONDAY...
* WHAT...Dangerous to impossible travel conditions due to intense
lake effect snow expected. Snow rates in excess of 3 inches per
hour, localized total snow accumulations of 12 to 18 inches, and
northerly wind gusts in excess of 30 mph are expected.
* WHERE...Central Cook, Eastern Will, Northern Cook, and Southern
Cook Counties.
* WHEN...From 9 PM this evening to noon CST Monday.
* IMPACTS...Snow rates in excess of 3 inches per hour will cripple
travel, including during the Monday morning commute. Strong
northerly wind gusts in excess of 30 mph will lead to greatly
reduced visibility, especially near the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Periods of thundersnow will occur, as well.
* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Lake effect snow is often very localized,
with conditions varying from safe to dangerous across just a few
miles. Snow totals in the Winter Storm Warning area may vary
considerably from one location to the next.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
Persons should consider delaying all travel while and where the lake
effect snow is ongoing.
Unfortunately for me, my work laptop is in my downtown office, and my most important meetings tomorrow are between 10 and 11:30. Because the forecast is for lake-effect snow, we have no way to predict exactly where it will hit. I've seen these things produce 30 cm of snow on one block and nothing on the next.
Right now, though, the weather looks good for aviation, and my plane appears to be here and ready to fly. We'll find out tomorrow whether I'll be able to make it to the office.
I made it to the Bay Area, and I'm about to fall asleep. Tomorrow I've got plans in both San Francisco and San Jose, which, if you care to glimpse a map, are nowhere near each other. (Seriously, they're farther apart than Chicago and Milwaukee.) Fortunately they have trains here.
Right, well, I'm off then. Assuming I don't get re-routed involuntarily, I should be home mid-afternoon Sunday, and assuming meteorologists know what they're doing, I will be rewarded for schlepping a heavy coat all over the country today by not dying of hypothermia when I get back to Chicago.
Je suis épuisé, et maintenant, je dors.
A warm and dry October has given us unusually late fall colors this year. They seem close to peak intensity this week, at least in my local park. Enjoy:
With the unusually late colors we have this autumn against the much earlier sunsets that started yesterday (before 4:30 pm from November 15th to December 31st, ugh!), things have remained tolerable. It will snow eventually; we'll have a freeze eventually; but for now, I'll just enjoy it.
I didn't enjoy these things, though:
In one bit of good news, the Illinois legislature restored $1.5 billion to state transit agencies, which means the CTA and Metra will live to fight another day. Included in the legislation was an end to parking minimums within 800 meters of public transportation hubs or corridors. I hope this encourages developers to build density where it's needed.