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- Currently in Chicago — September 12, 2023: Cloudy and drippy and humid, oh my
Currently in Chicago — September 12, 2023: Cloudy and drippy and humid, oh my
Plus, Kīlauea erupts in Hawai'i. You can watch a livestream.
Eric Holthaus & Katje Sabin
September 11, 2023
Cloudy with a slight chance of showers
Scattered showers are expected Monday night (maybe even conjuring a brief thunderstorm), and will give way to clouds by Tuesday morning. The cloud cover may gradually lift enough to see a glimpse of the sun by midday, with highs in the upper 60s, but the break will be brief as the clouds move back in by the evening. Winds gusting up to 25mph will affect lake conditions all day, with up to 7-foot waves predicted, so let’s just stay the heck out of the water. Tuesday night will remain cloudy, with a slight chance of rain as the temps drop to the mid 50s.
What you need to know, currently.
The Kīlauea volcano on the big island of Hawai’i began erupting on Sunday afternoon — its fifth eruption in the past four years.
Kīlauea is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, so this really isn’t a surprise, but it’s still a literally awesome reminder that we all live on a planet that is continually in motion at all space and time scales.
The Hawaiian islands were formed over the past 50 million years by the same plume of upwelling undersea magma in the middle of the Pacific. The island of Hawai’i is the largest and youngest island of the chain — Kīlauea emerged from under the ocean just 100,000 years ago. In 2018, the volcano’s summit collapsed and released a lava flow up to 500m (1600ft) thick that destroyed hundreds of homes and marked a shift into its current eruptive phase. In contrast, this week’s eruption is extremely minor — but still impressive.
The US Geological Survey has set up a live view of the eruption in Kīlauea’s Halemaʻumaʻu crater:
What you can do, currently.
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