My daughter is under 16, so her renewal comes up more often (5yrs). We are traveling in mid-Feb and the State Department says 4-6 week turnaround (like it pretty much always says). But I figure this is just past peak time, all the holiday travel is done, and most people did their renewals in the spring/summer, so we roll the dice - we don't expedite, we don't go to the Norwalk office with a ticket like last time.

And...

Passport to post office at 4pm on January 3, new passport arrives in the mail at 11am on January 14. Wow! Regular service in less than 11 days! I'm floored at how quickly our government can work.

But I guess this is the perfect storm. January 3 was the first day the post office was open this year, the first day after the holidays when everyone was traveling, and there must have been no backlog over the holidays.

Cheers,
daloosh