A weather pattern has set up shop near Chicago that threatens to occlude the sun for the next week, in exchange for temperatures approaching 15°C the first weekend of February. We've already had 43 days with above-normal temperatures this winter, and just 12 below normal during the cold snap from January 13th through the 22nd. By February 2nd, 84% of our days will have had above-normal temperatures since December 1st.
Thank you, El Niño. Though I'm not sure the gloominess is a fair exchange for it.
Elsewhere:
- President Biden, whose name didn't even appear on the ballot, won the New Hampshire Democratic primary by a larger margin than the XPOTUS won the Republican primary.
- The Washington State legislature has debated scrapping Daylight Saving Time entirely, a move that does not require USDOT sign-off, as the simplest path to avoiding the cognitive challenge of moving clocks twice a year. That this would cause 4am sunrises and 8pm sunsets in Seattle in June has not gone without notice.
- Speaking of Washington, aviation reporter Bill Saporito picks up the Atlantic's theme from 2019 and blames Boeing's problems on its cultural takeover by McDonnel-Douglas in 1997.
- New research finds that companies' return-to-office ("return to the past") mandates have no effect on profits or stock price, which everyone below the executive level already knew.
- My religious group has become the largest single denomination in the US. (We already took over most of Europe in the last century.)
Finally, Minnesota-based wildlife photographer Benjamin Olson discovered that a mouse had moved into his car. So naturally, he set up a photo trap. And naturally, it's totes adorbs.