Events

XKCD tackles the astronomical and geographical challenges of following the Star of Bethlehem: If the wise men leave Jerusalem and walk toward the star Sirius, day and night, even when it’s below the horizon, this is the path they follow over the surface: If we allow a little theological confusion and assume the wise men can walk on water, they’ll eventually wind up going in an endless circle, 30 kilometers in diameter, around the South Pole. Re-reading Matthew 2:7-10, however, I can't quite tell who the...

There he is, my sister's kid: No, no, no. This is my sister's kid: Sheesh. Merry Christmas, kid. And dog.

You'll never guess where I am: This is Chicago in December (though it looks and feels more like November). I tried flipping that photo between black & white and color a couple times, and I couldn't tell the difference. Tonight I meet the nephews...

Google Analytics have created some videos imagining if supermarkets were designed like websites: Heh.

As I've reported before, Chicago's winter temperatures have more influence over summer temperatures than the reverse. The hypothesis is that if Lake Michigan can't give up its summer heat in the winter, it has less capacity to absorb the next summer's heat. But in the winter, cold air masses have more capacity to absorb the lake's heat than summer's warm air masses have to deposit it. Well, if the weather so far is any indication, next summer will be brutal. We're not getting cold-enough air so far. The...

Downtown Chicago got the merest whisper of snowfall last night; O'Hare, our official station, got enough to set two records—in the negative. Just 200 km away, however, people got a little more than we did: The Madison, WI area was at the epicenter of this storm’s heaviest snows. Snowfalls as of 10:30PM Thursday included: 300 mm at Lena in western Stephenson Co, IL and up to 300 mm or more across Jo Davies County in far northwest Illinois where 33 km of US 20 were closed from Galena to Elizabeth due to...

Chicago has officially gotten measurable snowfall in the past couple of hours, ending the longest snow-free period in history. In the 291 days since March 4th, we haven't gotten more than a few flakes, less than the threshold 2.5 mm required to count as "measurable." The previous record, 280 days, was set in 1994. This is also the latest day for our first snowfall; the previous record was set on 16 December 1965. (With only ten hours left until the solstice, you think it could have waited?) Like so much...

As I've noted before, only one Web application still lives in my living room the Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Data Center: Weather Now. In the last few days, it's showing one more good reason that it needs to get to Windows Azure pronto. Take a look at my Google Analytics view of incoming visitors: What is going on? How do I go from 300 daily unique visitors to 1,800 in two days? Take a look at where they're coming from: Yes, that's right. Close to 40% of Weather Now's traffic came from the Yukon...

Florida's pathological "Stand Your Ground" law is working about as you'd expect: Florida's controversial "stand your ground" law has been cited in hundreds of cases. People have used it to justify shooting, stabbing, killing and maiming would-be intruders, romantic competitors and rival gang members. And on Sunday, at a pizza joint in St. Petersburg, a man tried to use it as justification for shooting another customer who was yelling at workers because he wasn't getting his order fast enough. Police...

Coincident with last week's release of Chasing Ice, a documentary about how climate change is affecting the polar regions, this month's Scientific American looks at how sea ice loss causes extreme weather. In the article—unfortunately behind a tall paywall—Charles Greene demonstrates how the loss of Arctic sea ice allows large loops in the mid-latitude jet stream to form, and to persist. Last winter, a negative Arctic oscillation combined with a positive North Atlantic oscillation (which controls...