Archive for February, 2011

Hultgren votes with the Dems

by , posted on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 at 8:35 am

Here’s a thing I did not see coming from my new congresscritter: Randy Hultgren has voted, along with a handful of other new tea-partiers in the House, to block the extension of three controversial Patriot Act provisions. And they succeeded in doing just that.

The motivation is actually quite consistent with tea-party logic – they see it as an unecessary intrusion on personal liberty – but the thing liberals need to think about is this: When’s the last time we saw a crack in the Repub block that resulted in blocking legislation that the Repubs wanted and the Dems did not? When? Anybody? Anybody?

The incident has me pondering two things this morning:

1. Where else can liberals find common ground with these Freshmen?

2. What would have happened if Progressives in Congress had displayed a similar unwillingness to “play ball” when the game itself violated their core convictions?

I could drive myself crazy pondering that latter ephemeral question, but the crack in the Republican block just delivered a tangible result.

So let’s be practical: What else can we do with this interesting new crack in the world?

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Egypt, my daughter, and the news

by , posted on Friday, February 4th, 2011 at 10:01 am

My daughter posted this link on her facebook the other day, along with a note that says “who needs the news?”

She then promptly followed that up with a couple of facebook posts complaining about the attacks on “her” Anderson Cooper, so apparently she does still feel the need for traditional media sources. And I know for a fact that she is relentlessly checking in with DailyKos, Huffington Post and CNN and MSNBC websites for news about what’s going on in Egypt.

Still, I think the fact that she’s following all these sources – mostly from her version of the device formerly known as a “cell phone” – is an interesting take on how information is assimilated by your average member of the generation now in their 30’s.

Multiple streams, constantly streaming.

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I do so

by , posted on Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 at 1:31 pm

love the Onion.

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Snowpocalypse 2011: February 2, Noon The Aftermath

by , posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 at 1:19 pm

The hour by hour forecast for my zip says clouday and windy for the rest of the day, but we’ve had full sun for most of the last couple of hours, barely a wisp of cloud or two in clear blue skies.
2-2-noon

For most of the morning the only traffic I saw were snowplows and a couple on a snowmobile but I just saw an actual passenger car go by. The streets are plowed, but not salted, ditto the driveway, where, after some considerable teamwork, the cars are free.
dsc01108

I think the roads are still officially closed here in Kane County, but I suspect we could make it to the store with no problem if we had a need to go, but I for one feel no motivation to do so. Anyway, for this household, and this community, it looks like the Great Snowpocalypse of 2011 is over with a minimum of bother.

Now about that plunging temp warning…

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Snowpocalypse 2011: February 2, 7:00 a.m.

by , posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 at 8:56 am

The sun is up, and…I’ve seen worse. Of course the snow has not stopped falling yet, so it could get worse, but I think at this point what we can expect is a little more accumulation over the day – maybe a few more inches.

The accumulation here, so far, is not as heavy as I expected, but then again there is a lot of drifting.

The view from the front door:
2-11-7am

And here’s the drift against the front door, still not too high:
2-11-7amdrift

Then again, here’s a shot from the side door that shows the drift against that door is deeper, and the neighbor’s car (and the garbage cans and the snowblower) pretty deep in drifts.
2-11-7am-back

If you look closely at the right side of the shot above, you’ll see the front bumper of the mini-van – it’s going to take a while to dig that out. Here’s a shot of the snow between the van and the house.
2-11-7amvan

As opposed to the two other cars in the front of the driveway, which are not so deep in drift:
22-11-7amcars2

Most of the drifts seem to be fetched up against objects toward the south. Like I said, I’ve seen worse blizzards. Hope everyone is safe this morning. I have no idea how bad it may be in Chicago, with lake effect snow, I suspect it may snow prettily heavily there far longer than it will here – I need to go check the local news. But out here in the boonies I expect we’ll be mostly dug out by tonight.

UPDATE: I just did go look at the local news, and they are predicting this one will go into the books as the third biggest blizzard in Chicagoland, after 1967 and 1999, so, yes, I have seen bigger blizzards. According to this article in the Daily Herald, the roads here in Kane County are officially closed. Also, if you do go out, you can expect to become stranded, and since they still have local snowmobile clubs rescuing people who got stuck last night (including police and snow plow drivers) you can expect to take a number and wait for help for a long, long time.

So lets all stay home for a while, okay?

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Snowpocalypse 2011: February 1, 9:30 p.m. Thundersnow!

by , posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 11:09 pm

Lightning and thunder here and the snow is falling fast. Not a weather phenomena you see every day, so glad I saw it before I went to bed. Neat ABC article on thundersnow here points out that only .07 percent of snowstorms produce thundersnow. Also, per this article and the storm warning from the National Weather Service, thundersnow storms tend to produce the largest and most rapid amounts of snow.

Pic outside the front door, without a flash at 9:30 p.m.:

Not a whiteout, but definitely poor visibility

Not a whiteout, but definitely poor visibility

Here’s the same view, same time, with a flash which helps pick out the actual snow:

View outside the front door, with the flash on

View outside the front door, with the flash on

Also, we lost power for just a second, flashed off and then back on, right before we noticed the lightning and heard the thunder. We temporarily lost internet access too, but its all good now.

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Snowpocalypse 2011: 7:00 p.m.

by , posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 8:24 pm

The thing about blizzards is that they insist on happening in the winter, so if they happen in the evening hours, it’s too dark to see much. Like so:

The scene outside the front door at 7 p.m.

The scene outside the front door at 7 p.m.


But there, for what its worth, is a pretty good depiction of what is happening right now: it’s snowing, and there is more snow on the ground than there was when I photographed this scene at 4:00 p.m., but not a lot more.

It’s pretty windy and drifting, so I also took a photo of the drift against the front door. It’s mere inches high right now, so I’m interested in seeing where it is by morning.
2-11-7pmdoordrift
If the fact that I am taking photos of minor snowdrift against the door isn’t enough of a clue, I’ll just state it outright: This is really a pretty boring thing right now. We might have snow thunder later, which might be cool to see, but I might well be asleep when it happens. The hour-by-hour forecast for my area now calls for the blizzard to really set in at midnight.

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Snowpocalypse 2011: 4:00 p.m. February 1

by , posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 5:22 pm

I don’t plan on doing these every hour, but thought I’d take a photo of the view from the front door, pre-blizzard, before I lost the light, then take another tomorrow morning and compare them.

Here’s the pre-blizzard photo:

Snowpocalypse 2011, pre-blizzard

Snowpocalypse 2011, pre-blizzard

You can see the snow is falling, not heavily. The street is fairly free of snow – a pair of plows just went through. This is a snow route, so it will be cleared more frequently than most side-streets.

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Snowpocalypse 2011: 3:00 p.m. February 1

by , posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 4:11 pm

Yeah, so it’s really snowing here, and the wind has picked up. If you are commuting westward from the city, and en route, or have not yet left work, it’s going to take you a while. My daughter is commuting right now, just talked to her and she says she left Schaumburg at 2 and is now at the intersection of Army Trail and Dunham, just north of St. Charles. She beat most of it, but still ran into some whiteout patches where she could not see a foot in front of her car while on Army Trail. It’s a very rural road with not a lot to block the wind, so that’s a factor.

Go home everyone. And go carefully.

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Welcome to Snowpocalypse 2011

by , posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 1:32 pm

It hasn’t even started snowing yet (well, a few flurries, a dusting overnight last night) and already there is an enormous reaction to the blizzard-to-be.

O’Hare has pre-emptively cancelled 1,100 flights (for those of you who were passing through: Welcome to Chicago!)

Quinn has called out the Natiional Guard.

A co-worker reported circling the parking lot at the grocery store several times last night, only to be shoved out of the way by a man reaching for bread once she actually managed to find a parking space and get inside.

The library is frantically busy, with patrons reporting they have stocked up on food and are now after books and dvds.

I finished working at 11 today – not an early departure for me, but a regular time – stopped by Starbucks on my way home to spend a Christmas gift card on bag of whole bean French Roast (call it my version of a Snowpocalypse Emergency Kit).

The grandkids are in school, most schools, libraries, businesses, offices, etc, are open today, and no doubt most of them will be closed tomorrow. By the way, here’s a great website to check Chicagoland emergency closings.

The hour-by-hour forecast on weather.com calls for “severe weather” to kick in at 3 p.m. (at my zip code-60174) and that is sustained through most of rush hour and the evening, with a lull from 6-10 p.m. (a lull in terms of it not being encased in a red warning bars that state “severe weather”) and “blizzard” kicking in at 11 p.m. and predicted to last through 7 a.m. tomorrow.

So it’s an overnight blizzard. Oh, sure, snow will continue to fall through most of the day tomorrow, and driving will no doubt be disastrous starting with this afternoon’s commute and lasting through tomorrow, but the worst of it seems to be overnight.

All of which leads me to wonder why people around me are so panicked. We are too far west to see lake-effect snow (could and undoubtedly will be, much, much worse in the city). Really, its not like we’ve never had a blizzard before – come on people, this is Illinois!

So Happy Snowpocalypse: for all of you to whom this entire event will amount to getting a day off tomorrow, and that will probably be most of us, enjoy!

For the rest of you, all of you emergency and public service workers and first-responders out there: thank you! Sorry you will not get the day off, but we appreciate you doing all the heavy lifting on and during this one. I figure the best thing we can do to thank you is go home and stay there, safely out of your way.

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