It's official: with two days left, this is the warmest winter in Chicago history, with the average temperature since December 1st fully 3.5°C (6.3°F) above normal. We've had only 10 days this winter when the temperature stayed below freezing, 8 of them in one week in February. This should remain the case when spring officially begins on Friday, even though today's near-record 23°C (so far) is forecast to fall to -6°C by 6am. And that's not even to discuss the raging thunderstorms and possible tornadoes we might get as an energetic cold front slices through tonight. By "energetic," I mean that the NWS predicts a drop by as much as 16°C (30°F) in one hour around 10pm.
Not to worry: it'll be 17°C by Sunday. (The normal high temperatures are 4.7°C for February 27th and 5.4°C for March 3rd; the records are 23.9°C and 26.7°C, respectively.)
Meanwhile, I don't have time to read all of these before I pack up my laptop tonight:
- While the XPOTUS has barely gotten the support of 60% of his own party in the last three primary elections this cycle, despite literally everyone knowing he'll be the nominee, Josh Marshall expects a week of Biden In Trouble™ articles if Biden fails to win by 95% in tonight's Michigan primary.
- Right-wing nutjob lawyer Ken Cheesbro has a not-so-secret-anymore Twitter account in which he made certain admissions that will very likely result in a perjury charge or two.
- Republican 11th Circuit judge Kevin Newsom criticized the "traditionalists" on the US Supreme Court for straying far from originalism in remarks last week at Harvard.
- Jennifer Rubin adores New York Attorney General Letitia Jones's "fire in the belly."
- Claire Potter reviews Matthew Lassiter's history of the War on Drugs and finds "the suburbs made the War on Drugs in their own image."
- Asia Mieleszko reminds the haters that Dallas used to have a walkable downtown, until they paved it over.
- Biologist David Gruber imagines what first contact with an alien civilization might look like, when the civilization in question is that of terrestrial sperm whales.
And now, back to getting ready for the Sprint 103 release. That's a lot of sprints.