This was taken, as I recall, on Tuesday evening:
Chicago, sunset with gathering storm
May 23, 2014 • 4:30 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I’m puzzled by geography…
The U of C is south of the city center, right? But the pic of the evening skyline shows the (sun) lighting on the right, to the east?
Is the photo reversed? (I don’t know the skyline features to say from their relative locations.)
Not reversed; sun is setting to the west (left); it’s just that the darkening storm hadn’t yet moved toward the east, so the clouds are lighter to reflect the sun (or at least that’s my theory, which is mine).
Don’t answer! It’s a trick to find your location. Awwww too late. 🙂
UofC is SSE of the city center. The Lake Michigan shore curves east as you go south. The southern edge of the city is about 4.5 miles further into Lake Michigan than the northern edge. UofC is 1 to 2 miles east of due south from the city center. I believe Jerry is taking his pix about 1.5 mile east.
The skyline features – the four tallest buildings are from right to left: John Hancock, AON (originally Standard Oil), Trump Tower, and Willis Tower (originally Sears Tower). The AON building (200 East Randolph – Randolph is 100 north) is actually slightly east of the Hancock (875 North Michigan – Michigan is 100 east). The Hancock is about a mile north of AON. So perspective is off a bit.
Chicago is laid out in a grid. 800 = 1 mile. The origin (0/0) is State and Madison. So north or south is from Madison Street (not Avenue – that is NYC), east or west is from State Street. Except for the first three miles south of Madison – Roosevelt (1200S), Cermak (2200S) and 35th Street (3500S) are the first three miles – then it reverts to 800 per mile. So the northwest corner of the UofC campus – 55th St (aka Garfield Boulevard) and Cottage Grove (800 East) is 5.5 miles south and 1 mile east of the origin in the city center.
The University goes as far south as 61st St and as far east as Stony Island (1600 East) – although the corner of 61st and Stony is not within the campus borders.
Hope that helps – I cannot help you with the atmospherics.
Quite the disquisition! Also, most interesting–thanks!
Jerry, I think a collection of all your variously sky-ed Chicago-scapes would be very cool. Perhaps there’s a coffee-table book in your future. 🙂
Fog bank on Lake Michigan