Clik here to view.
Five Lakes in One
The NASA satellite image below shows the five Great Lakes on a rare cloudless day (August 28, 2010). The lake basins were gouged out by a series of continental glaciers comprised of ice sheets more...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aurora Borealis Visits Chicago
If you live in the Chicagoland area (as we do), you’ve probably heard about the northern lights show that graced our part of the country last Monday night. According to astronomers it was the first...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Concentric Zones of Building Age in Chicago
Hughie, hold my halo. I’m sick of being a saint: Got to teach youngsters To hit ‘em where they ain’t. -Ogden Nash Many of the original and innovative contributions to the field of urban sociology...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Winter that Almost Wasn’t
This time last week it was 55° and sunny in Chicago and much of the Midwest. Golf courses were still taking tee times, people were out jogging with shorts on, and local animals were fooled into...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mild Winter and Lake Michigan’s Ice Formations
The following post is in two parts. The first part, originally published on the GSC’s website, documents ice formations on Lake Michigan from the winter of 2009-2010, one of the more robust winters in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lake Michigan’s Ice Formations: Part 3
The following post is the third installment of an ongoing series here at the Backyard Geographer documenting seasonal ice formations on Lake Michigan. For parts 1 and 2, see this post from early last...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Quote from last week’s New York Times Magazine Cover Story on Chicago’s...
“We’re not like Detroit, cordoning off sections of the city,” Benet Haller, Chicago’s principal adviser for planning and design, told me. “But we are like London or Jakarta, with a hyperdense core — a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Best Photos of Winter Storm Hercules
Last Thursday and Friday, a massive winter storm, dubbed by The Weather Channel as “Hercules,” brought impressive snowfall and frigid temperatures to much of the Northeast and Midwest. Although the...
View Article
