Good morning! Happy Thursday. Some pretty heavy rain and 53 degrees in Cicero, NY. There is a north-northwest breeze at 6 mph. The dew point is 52 degrees. A very wet day, although the rain will fade out later, and it will just be damp and cloudy. The skies will clear tomorrow around noontime. I sure hope this pattern doesn’t last for all of November, as it would be darn depressing for camping and my road trip come next week. I plan to leave a week from Friday (Veterans Day) and return the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

Continued showers through the morning, then just clouds and dampness later. High of 54 degrees at 1pm. One degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 51 at 9am. Northwest wind 6 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. Last year, mostly sunny with a high around 72. I wish we had weather like that today. The record high of 75 was set in 1990. There was 0.9 inches of snow back in 1951, back when Averill Harriman was the governor and the man from Missouri was President.

The sun will set at 5:52 pm with dusk around 6:22 pm, which is 1 minutes and 16 seconds earlier than yesterday. Daylight Savings Time ends on Sunday morning at 2:59 AM when our clocks automatically flip back an hour, except for the clock in Big Red.  Today will have 10 hours and 8 minutes of daylight, a decrease of 2 minutes and 33 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly between 8pm and 5am. Low of 42 degrees at 5am. Six degrees above normal. West wind 7 to 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. One year ago, clear with a low around 40. The record low of 17 occurred back in 1951.

There are 3 weeks until Thanksgiving when the sun will be setting at 4:33 pm with dusk at 5:04 pm (Standard Time). The average high temperature is 44 degrees, with a record high of 70 in 2014.

There are 4 days, 12 hours and 16 minutes until the polls close in NY State on Election Day. At this point, I am pretty indifferent about the presidential election. I voted for Jill Stein, and I honestly don’t care if Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton wins. Both of them will make our lives miserable.

I don’t understand why some of my friends get all excited about the Presidential race. I would be absolutely fine with Trump winning. I think he would be a good safe guard on the second amendment. I also think he would have a more balanced approach to the environment and be less antagonistic towards the people who use our public lands. On the other hand, I think Clinton would be better on the economy and foreign relations. There are many things I like about Trump, and other things I like about Clinton. Time is going by so quickly at this point, but I’m glad it will be soon over. And then I’ll be in the woods, hopefully not sitting under a tarp, freezing off my ass, listening to the NPR’s postmortems on the election on my waterproof bluetooth speaker. But hopefully not snow.

Since I got the new brakes on my truck, I’m impressed how smoothly it stops. Actually, it’s a bit disconcerting to apply the brakes and feel nothing at all as the peddle is depressed — besides the vehicle slowing. I guess the rotators were pretty warped, but I hadn’t noticed because it was gradual. Even in the rain this morning, the truck stopped very smoothly. It used to be kind of bad with the rain.

Back in 1957, The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika. He had no plan for return, and gave his life on the mission, but he did survive living in outer space for several hours, showing that human life could be sustained up there.

Today, three years later in 1960, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge was established by an Act of Congress after a year-long legal battle that pitted local residents against Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials wishing to turn the Great Swamp into a major regional airport for jet aircraft.