Polar Vortex 2014

geez that sucks

throw a bomb at them Karl

It was remarkable how many more people I saw out today.

omg karl! i hope it's back!! let us know either way if you can!!

so have your jobs been lenient? Sounds like not.

my school cancelled classes and closed tues night through thurs
(following the lead of many institutions of higher ed in the area -- which is a welcome change from pretending that our students are somehow more hardy than everyone else and able to attend classes in a weather emergency)

My wife worked from home both days. Both my kids had school canceled, though, weirdly, in one casenot parent-teacher conferences today.

xp yeah i had two and a half days cancelled but it didn't matter because i wasn't working during them anyway. campus seemed kind of sparse today even though it's more residential than commuter.

Power just came back on! My phone died too so I just went to bed, hungry, like a wicked Victorian child

glad you're charged

it’s now going to be uncharacteristically warm on sunday and I feel like the impending clogged storm sewer slush madness is going to be a dumb follow-up

prepare for the sidewalks to turn into churning rivers/log flumes of dog waste

I think I'll take it. Our cat was so confused the last couple of days, compelled to go outside and then figuratively frozen in confusion at the same time he was probably literally freezing. The other night as far as I can tell he was outside just long enough to throw up before coming back inside.

this morning he asked to go outside, so I let him out for a couple of minutes. when I opened the door for him he ran straight to his emergency litter box and peed.

i am not complaining, simply stating a fact. my littledogs have been going out and doing their business outside throughout this ordeal -- i just know there are several layers of frozen water about to melt that will reveal unknown treasures (dog poops)

i was worried night before last that you were going to have to rely on littledogs as your heat source!

that makes me grateful that there is a relatively low dog/house density in my neighborhood

I know my next door neighbors have probably just been letting their three dogs do their business in the fenced-in back yard for the last week and not picking anything up so the smells by next monday will be a treat

lest anyone think i am a monster, i picked all mine up as i have done since the dawn of time

A naïve question (I swear I'm not trolling) from someone who has often had to endure -30C (pre-windchill) and the like: with its humid continental climate, Chicago routinely slips below zero during the winter, no? How unusual is the current vortex? And is there no emergency plan in effect?

I've lived in Chicago and Montreal and can tell you: it's very unusual!

it is historical and unusual
temps up to maybe 10 below 0 are routine and to be expected (shitty but not out of the ordinary); this time the standing temp was -21 or so, and the windchill was -49 or something like that. the temperature was this low from tuesday night until this morning, when it went up to 2 last i checked.

emergency plan = cancellations/closures/warming centers and beyond that ?? it's not like snow where something needs to be removed. it's an inhospitable environment that needs to be waited out i guess.

That is indeed insane. Good luck to you all – waiting it out does appear to be the best course of action.

I'm not in Chicago, but our weather's nearly the same minus lake effect. Generally there are a few days every couple winters that dip below zero. It's usually just overnight and for a day or so. This year it was multiple days in a row, and much colder than usual. Infrastructurally we're just not set up for that level of sustained cold -- the Target store I went to the other night was chilly because the heating system couldn't keep up.

on a more personal note, I've lived in the same house for eight winters and the crawlspace under my kitchen, which I've procrastinated on reinsulating, has had the cold water pipe freeze up exactly twice: once last year on a cold night, and this year for several days running, even during the day

I'm reminded of an architect friend explaining how lazy chain stores would expand to the north and have a local agency look over the building plans before submitting them to a local planning office. On multiple occasions, he had to explain to people in the south that their roofs, as designed, would collapse if we got more than two inches of snow. Because they're cheap, he had to fight them to make sure everything was *just* up to code.

You can imagine how much they wanted to spend on heating systems and insulation. Only get blasting cold a day or two every couple years? Why would we design for that case!

pomenitul, there are ~infrastructure~ considerations that come into play when the temperatures are so extremely cold, because even things in the upper midwest are not designed taking those extremities into account. but it's more a matter of strain on the systems, risks, etc., not a bright line across which there would be an emergency.

the power company in my area sent out a notice to some rural parts to reduce thermostat temps to reduce load on their gas lines. then they expanded it to every customer in the region. it was the same kind of thing they sometimes ask in summer peak load times for a/c.

there was a story here about the government responses that described their adopting 'a heightened state of readiness' to i dunno do things or approve of services.

in recent years w/ the economy and the age of the transit system there has been an uptick in homeless people relying on our light rail trains as shelter - something that has been elevated already this winter. with the weather this week the officials out and out said they would not be chasing off anyone, nor anyone on a bus who kept quiet. normally homeless are rousted from the transit stations overnight, and they made a concerted effort to get everyone transported to a bed in a shelter, or barring that, let them stay with supervision overnight.

so i guess part of the 'emergency plan' is to relax the staunch midwestern social norms! which is very trying to our psyches

over a dozen fatalities so far:

https://news.yahoo.com/fedex-worker-found-frozen-death-160314403.html

The guy was 69 years old and working for fucking fed ex and fucking froze to death

i have my window open now. Crazy weather.

hang in there man, stay cool

I was hoping we'd get more of a reprieve after last week, but apparently Chicago is going to get a massive ice storm tonight? I keep seeing phrases like "travel impossible" and "tree and power line damage likely" in reports.

jfc
i heard one inch of ice

hope travel is not impossible because my class tonight was cancelled last week thanks to this garbage and i would like to get the show on the gd road

Yeah, I'm hoping it doesn't get that bad.

Glad you survived the power outage. Had a similar nerve-wracking several hours that afternoon.

meanwhile NYC is getting a 60 degree day

the seasons and earth are dying

over here we have frozen the earth so that it can be reanimated in the future once scientists discover a cure