Events

Chicago this year has not only gotten almost enough rain to hit a new record, but it's also gotten more than enough heat: July's 230 mm of rain at O'Hare places the month only 13 mm away from July's 122 year old record of 243 mm recorded in 1889. A more typical July would have a rainfall tally closer to 67 mm by now—just a third as much as has fallen this month. ... July's opening 26 days are averaging 26.2°C. That makes the month the warmest at O'Hare since weather readings were first archived at the...

I mentioned yesterday morning needing to blow some frequent-flyer miles this autumn. So far, I've whittled the list down to Scotland, Budapest, Madrid, and Tokyo. (It turns out Canada only costs 30,000 miles round-trip, so I might just go to Montréal for a weekend instead of making a big thing about it.) Any other places people would strongly recommend for a 4- or 5-day trip in late November or early December? (If you're wondering why I care about this in July, then obviously you haven't tried to book...

Welcome to the semi-annual update of the Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2011 3 Jul 8:30pm sunset 05:20 20:30 15:09 17 Jul 5:30am sunrise 05:30 20:24 14:53 9 Aug 8pm sunset 05:53 20:00 14:06 17 Aug 6am sunrise 06:00 19:48 13:48 29 Aug 7:30pm sunset 06:13 19:30 13:16 15 Sep 6:30am sunrise 06:30 19:01 12:30 16 Sep 7pm sunset 06:32 18:59 12:27 23 Sep Equinox, 03:05 CDT 06:39 18:49...

...to go somewhere else. Yesterday's final, official figure: 208 mm, a full 43 mm more than the rainfall that caused the record floods in August 1987. And it's not over yet.

Today has set the record as the wettest day in Chicago history, and (a) it's only 11am and (b) more rain is coming: Overnight rains that approached 178 mm over northern Cook County broke several impressive Chicago records. 176 mm of precipitation has been measured at O'Hare International Airport since Midnight making today, Chicago's wettest calandar day in modern weather history.

I'm looking for community input. Mostly because of business travel, but also because I have signed up for almost every reward program that American Airlines offers, this year I expect to earn around 200,000 frequent-flyer miles. I need to spend them. And when best to spend them then off-season, in late November or early December, when people aren't traveling much? But where to go? American and its partner oneworld carriers fly non-stop from Chicago to about 95 destinations, ranging in distance from...

What happens when two air conditioners together draw more than 15 amps on a 15-amp circuit? This: (Click to see full-size.) The graph not only shows how quickly the place warmed up when the breaker tripped Wednesday evening, but also how slowly it cooled off once I closed the breaker. The initial cliff-like dive in temperature yesterday at 5:15pm happened because after turning the AC back on, I put a box fan next to the server rack and shut down two of the servers. You can see the temperature bumped up...

It appears the air conditioners back at IDTWHQ have failed, while I'm 1,700 km away: The chart starts at 7pm Chicago time Tuesday. The squiggle shows the backup air conditioner cycling on and off while it's in "energy saving" mode. That stops around 2pm yesterday, when, I imagine, the backup failed. Then, at 8:30pm last night, the main seems to have stopped. I'll be leaving San Antonio on an earlier flight. I just hope the A/C units have simply stopped, and that they'll start again when I turn them on....

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the boilerplate: /* * Copyright (c) 1995, 2008, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * * - Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * * - Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright * notice...

Chicago has seen its hottest temperatures in years this week, with more coming today: Not since July 24, 2005 when O'Hare hit 39°C and a reading of 40°C occurred at Midway, has a triple-digit [Fahrenheit] reading occurred at the city's two observation sites. The entire 83 year observational record at Midway includes only 84 38°C or higher temperatures—and just 26 have occurred in the nearly half-century period since 1960. Good thing I'm not in Chicago this week. No, I'm in San Antonio, where the...