Category Archives: Weather

Jana Seta Tallinn

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This looks like a promising way to ease into proto-spring. Or, as you notice the crunch of snow under your feet give way to squishing sounds, the Mud Season.

That’s just the near-term weather forecast for where I live, and thus a very narrow focus. I am glad — for any number of reasons, including Siberian weather — I don’t live in Irkutsk. The days ahead for that place:

Which pretty much looks like here during February until a few days ago, except we had more snow. Another difference is that I expect the rest of the spring is going be much colder in Irkutsk than here.

Then again, for year-round pleasant weather, I hear the place you want to be is Medellín:

That does look pleasant, just keep a sweater around for the evening. Reminds me of Mexico City in December, except there wasn’t a bit of rain.

One more map (for now): Tallinn. Nice town, Tallinn, at least in 1994, and I expect it’s done well for itself in the generation since casting off the Soviet yoke.

The map front is simple enough, and reminds everyone where Estonia is in the greater scheme of Europe. Guess some people need to be reminded of that kind of thing.

The map is the product of Jana Seta, “publishing house, maps and art gallery” in Riga. I’m happy to report that it’s still around, and has a web site that tells me that the company had just started business the same year we visited Riga, which was just after we were in Tallinn. Unfortunately, we didn’t visit the map store.

“We started on the 19th of April 1994 when the specialized map and travel literature outlet — Jana Seta Map shop — opened its doors to the first customers in the newly renovated Berg’s Bazaar building in Riga,” the site says. “At that time it was the first and only specialized map shop in the Baltics.

“Together with the constant in-going and out-going tourism development in Latvia, our shop has grown to become one of the leading map shops in the whole of Eastern Europe. Many trips around Latvia and abroad have started at the shelves of our map and tourism literature.

“The former USSR army general staff topographic map and city plans (published 1949-1991) have a special place in our assortment.” Hm.

One side of the map is a wider view of the city, while the other has a detailed map of the historic center, plus an index and advertisements for the kinds of things that tourists and business travelers might want, mostly in English. Looks like Jana Seta was quick to pick up the ways of private enterprise. The map key and other information are in English, Russian and (I assume) Latvian.

This is the inset for the historic center of Tallinn.

A fine old place to visit, though we stayed in cheaper accommodations out from the center, in a Soviet-era block of flats, and rode the convenient trolley into the old town. I see that I marked a few places of interest in purple ink, including one I labeled “puppet theater.” As much as I’d like to say that we went to a puppet theater in Tallinn, I’m afraid we didn’t.

“The Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn is an exceptionally complete and well-preserved medieval northern European trading city on the coast of the Baltic Sea,” says UNESCO, which put it on the World Heritage list in 1997. “The city developed as a significant centre of the Hanseatic League during the major period of activity of this great trading organization in the 13th-16th centuries.

“The upper town (Toompea) with the castle and the cathedral has always been the administrative centre of the country, whereas the lower town preserves to a remarkable extent the medieval urban fabric of narrow winding streets, many of which retain their medieval names, and fine public and burgher buildings, including town wall, Town Hall, pharmacy, churches, monasteries, merchants’ and craftsmen’ guilds, and the domestic architecture of the merchants’ houses, which have survived to a remarkable degree. The distribution of building plots survives virtually intact from the 13th-14th centuries.”

One more thing I learned just now from Jana Seta’s site: “Mars has three craters named for places in Latvia: Auce, Rauna and Talsi. Now you know.”

(Very) Local Snow Scenes

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After shoveling snow yesterday, I went around outside the house and took pictures. It looks like you’d expect.

Out the back, looking southwest and then south.A lot of damned snow


Nothing we haven’t seen before, but still impressive.

Our driveway.

The plume of snow over our neighbor’s fence is the result of him using his snow blower on his backyard patio. I partially dug out my car, in case I had to go somewhere during the day. I didn’t, so it remains mostly covered.

The view down the driveway to the street, looking north.

Like ours, almost all of the other driveways on the block are still covered a half-inch or so of snow. But yesterday afternoon I spotted one near neighbor using a leaf blower to try to clear that last coat of snow. Whatever, buddy.

Front yard, looking west. Life goes on. It isn’t fully visible in the picture, but the person in blue down the street was walking her dog.

The ridge of snow is next to the driveway. Considerable effort has gone into building it, including our shoveling and then snowfall. It comes up to about my mid-chest.

Now what we need is a string of sunny days just above freezing to slowly wear down the piles. A long string. Not a few really warm days in March marked by rain.

The Presidents Day Storm: We Called It Monday

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Another Presidents Day come and gone. The aftermath of the Presidents Day Storm of 2021 still lingers, especially down South. (I’d forgotten about the Presidents Day Storm of 2003, probably because it was NE and Mid-Atlantic.)

Around here we merely had more snow pile on top of our increasingly large drifts. About 6 inches in my neck of the suburbs, but other metro Chicago places got two or even three times as much. In any case, it’s accumulating. In some parts of my yard, the snow looks at three feet deep.

Indoors, I marked the day by taping a new postcard to the wall. It depicts FDR.

“During the autumn of 1944, Roosevelt received a letter from artist Douglas Chandor, proposing that a painting be created of Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, to document the allied efforts at the Yalta Conference in Russia,” the Smithsonian says about the painting.

“Chandor arranged a sitting for Roosevelt in early April, less than a month before the president’s passing. This portrait is a study for the larger painting, The Big Three at Yalta — a sketch of which appears at the lower left. Chandor also painted a life portrait of Churchill, which is owned by the National Portrait Gallery, but Stalin would not sit for his portrait. Thus, The Big Three at Yalta was never painted.

“Chandor believed that hands revealed as much of a person’s spirit as his or her face would, and therefore experimented with multiple configurations and gestures, scattered across the bottom of the canvas. Roosevelt, however, was dismayed by the attention Chandor paid to his hands, dismissing them as ‘unremarkable’ and likening them to ‘those of a farmer.’ ”

Interesting hands, but also an idealized face. I’ve seen photographs of President Roosevelt from around that time, and there was more than a hint of death in his face. The ravages of untreated hypertension, perhaps.

Speaking of presidents, one of our most recent Star Trek episodes was the one in which Abraham Lincoln gets a spear in the back. As Capt. Kirk said, it was a little hard to watch. So was the episode, though it wasn’t quite as bad as I remembered. Just mostly. I don’t feel like looking up the title. If you know it, you know it.

One interesting detail, though. Faux-Lincoln comes to the Enterprise bridge and, among other things, has a short interaction with Uhura. He uses a certain word and apologizes, afraid that he has offended her. To which, Uhura says:

“See, in our century, we’ve learned not to fear words.”

Of all the many optimistic things Star Trek ever expressed about the future, that has to be the most optimistic of all.

Weekend at Home Ahead

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No picturesque sunset today. Not around here, anyway.

From the NWS recently:

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON CST FRIDAY…

* WHAT… Periods of snow through mid evening with an additional 1 to 2 inches possible. West winds will gust as high as 45 mph this evening, and this will result in significant blowing and drifting snow. The worst conditions are expected this evening.

* WHERE … Portions of north central and northeast Illinois, including the Chicago metro.

Not bad except for the wind. I expect some odd snow shapes in the yard when I go out to shovel in the morning. If only the wind would sculpt the snow into ridges paralleling my driveway, with little in it.

Not likely. Also, where’s that snow-blowing robot? Well, here. Looks like it’s still in beta, though — crowdfunding’s a giveaway — and probably costs a fortune anyway. But there’s always the hard-core solution to accumulated snow. Probably illegal in the suburbs. Something Florida Man might do, expect he’d be hard-pressed to find any snow. Maybe Florida Man’s cousin in the UP would.

What a treasure cave YouTube is. A good thing if you have to be at home, which is the way it would mostly be even during an ordinary February. First, a band that owes much to Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, and they do well with it. I’m sure the luminous Tatiana Eva Marie, the lead singer, must have been influenced by Francophone chanteuses, but I’m too ignorant to know who.

I know nothing about Armenian folk songs. If one of the comments under this video is to be believed, this sweet tune is a song of resistance against the enemies of the Armenian people, and everyone knows who they are.

Old song, young voice: Rachael Price. That’s the case for the other singers as well.

A weekend’s a weekend, and a thing to savor if possible.

Icicles

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After the most recent snow, temps have been close to freezing, and the sun came out. That meant the formation of icicles.
That melting dynamic won’t last long.
Don’t like the looks of that. I thought the border with Canada was closed. Anyway, we aren’t going to get away with a mild winter after all.

Snow to Finish January

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Over the last weekend of January, more snow. Another eight inches — or 10, or a foot, it’s hard to tell — on top of the 7 or so earlier in the week.

Not a blizzard like almost 10 years ago exactly. Just a steady fall for 12 hours or more, and the trucks tasked with plowing the streets were able to keep up with it. On Sunday morning, we dug out our driveway. Tiring and tiresome, but not particularly hard, and so life will resume uninterrupted on Monday.

There wasn’t a lot of wind, but there was some, and I think it knocked over the grill.
One of the three legs was weak anyway, so down went the tripod, as broken and ruined as the Delphic tripod must have been when Theodosius ordered the Temple of Apollo destroyed in AD 390. Unlike that tripod, there’s a replacement grill waiting in the garage for spring to return.

Snow Day, But Not Really

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Heavy snow last night and into the morning. We were up at 7 a.m. or so to shovel, but soon postponed the task, since we knew we’d have to do it again in a few hours. And that’s what happened after the snow finally slacked off around noon.

We got 7.5 inches, according to the NWS, making it the first heavy snow of the season — always good when it comes this late — and the most since the unusual snowfall of November 2018.

One reason we were up at 7 was that a phone call interrupted whatever odd dream I was having at the time. Who can be calling now? I wondered.

It was a Schleswig-Holstein High robocall. The school has been holding some classes in person lately — optional, with Ann choosing to stay home. The call was to tell us about a snow day, except that unlike in the past, classes weren’t cancelled, simply moved online. Seems like I was right. Snow days are no more.

Poplar Creek, Winter ’21

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So far winter hasn’t been all that harsh. No blizzards, no subzero stretches. We’ve gotten snow a few inches at a time, which has thinned out during days just above freezing. Still, I suspect an Arctic blast is coming soon. Probably after the heavy snow due tomorrow night.

In the meantime, temps around freezing mean we can take walks in forest preserves. Not long ago we took the dog out to the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve (formally the Arthur L. Janura Forest Preserve). It’s close by here in the northwest suburbs, but we hadn’t been in a good while.

Poplar Creek FPPoplar Creek FPPoplar Creek FPOff the main path is a path to Bode Lake.
Poplar Creek FPPoplar Creek FPLooks frozen over, but I bet the ice is pretty thin, so no walking on the lake unless you’re a small creature. No ice fishing either. If that’s the price of a mild winter, I don’t mind.

Flags of Insurrection

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That doesn’t look too bad for January.
Been reading a lot about the insurrection today, partly because it’s my job, partly as an American citizen who ought to take an interest in the political illness gripping the nation. With any luck, in retrospect, yesterday will be the day the fever broke. But I’m not betting the mortgage money on it.

Oddly enough, Quartz published an article about the flags carried by the insurrectionists. I was inspired to look into the matter when I noticed some flags that I didn’t recognize in the many photos of the event.

Besides the modern U.S. flag, many others are recognizable, of course, such as the 13-star U.S. (Betsy Ross) flag, the Confederate battle flag, the Gadsden Flag, the U.S. Marine Corps flag and the Thin Blue Line flag.

Even odder, according to Quartz, “the flags of Canada, Cuba, Georgia, India, Israel, South Korea, and South Vietnam were spotted in the mob.” Go figure.

Some I’d never heard of: the Republic of Kekistan flag, the Three Percentage flag and the VDare/Lion Guards of Trump flag. Usually ignorance is a bad thing, but I’m glad I’ve never heard of any of those before.

Spring Valley Winter ’21

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I don’t know Rep. Mike Gallagher (R.-Wis.), but I believe he had the spot-on quote for the day, which I heard on the radio this afternoon: “This is banana republic crap.”

Five months ago, the full flush of summer marked Spring Valley. Two days into the new year, the place was markedly brown and gray and white.Spring Valley Nature CenterWe had a pretty good walk anyway, especially since the paths were mostly clear of ice patches.
Spring Valley Nature CenterSnow and ice fell during the last days of December, and on New Year’s Day itself, but it was above freezing the next day, enough to melt some of the ice. Not much ice on the creek either, but I wouldn’t want to fall in.
Spring Valley Nature CenterThe unpaved trails offered the crunch of snow underfoot, a sound I like.
Spring Valley Nature CenterThe peony field.

Spring Valley Nature PreserveThe snow was wet enough to cling to most of the trees.Spring Valley Nature PreserveIt sifts from Leaden Sieves —
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road —

(Emily Dickinson)