Good morning! Happy Monday. Sunny and 72 degrees on our way up to 86 later. Somewhat humid later with dew points pushing 63 degrees, but that’s not unheard of during the summer months. Thunderstorms later in the week, to start out August. Today is the final day of July, tomorrow starts August. Be aware, come August, the days get dramatically shorter, and we will be sliding into the Labor Day Weekend in less then five weeks.

I guess it’s back to work, taking the local bus downtown. Things are certainly bright and sunny, and fairly warm after a quick, but quite wet week on vacation. I am half jokingly thinking about tacking a few vacation days on to the weekend proceeding August 21st, to do a mini-do over if it looks like it’s going to be sunny and in the 90s those days. I could use some nice sunny days in those Adirondack Chairs at the Watkins Glen pool and watch the cows chomp on grass and stare at the stars at 1 AM, even if it is 3 ½ hours away. Chances of that happening are probably pretty low. But I can dream.

At least the sun is making it easier to get going and head downtown this morning. I am sure once I get into the office, there will be plenty of sun streaming onto my desk, greating me to the new day. And if this week goes anything like the week I had off for vacation, it will be weekend before you know it. That said, as of this morning, the weekend forecast doesn’t look all that great, but that’s subject to revision. If it’s really hot, I would like to get up to the potholers, but I don’t know if that is going to be. Schoharie County might be fun, or maybe even the Green Mountain National Forest.

In the meantime, I will probably put some of the camping gear away tonight, although nowadays I end up leaving much of it in the kitchen, including the plastic box that keeps all my dry goods. I figure no need to pack and repack that every time I go camping. I don’t know for sure, but I do summer is rapidly coming to an end – and while certainly I can enjoy nice weekends in the Adirondacks in September, by then all of the public beaches will be closed, and the nights come dramatically earlier. I probably do need to think about getting my hunting license soon, as they will be on sale before you know it.

Tonight, the sun will set at 8:16 pm with dusk around 8:48 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly cloudy conditions and 77 degrees. The dew point will be 65 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 28 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 9 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have isolated showers and thunderstorms before midnight. Some of the storms could produce heavy rain. Partly cloudy, with a low of 63 degrees at 5am. One degree above normal. Maximum dew point of 65 at 8pm. West wind around 5 mph becoming calm after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2016, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 67 degrees. The record low of 46 occurred back in 1964.

I did like leaving for vacation by not driving in the city and taking the bus home then packing the cooler and heading off to vacation. Maybe I got to camp 15 minutes to a half hour later, but my food remained cooler, I didn’t have to fight traffic on the Thruway, and I didn’t have to worry about the propane getting too hot. Honestly, I thought it worked out quite well, even if the bus ride home was one where I was just counting down the minutes to home. Even with light traffic, it seemed like it took forever to get home. That said, now that we are into August, ever minute counts, if I want to get set up before darkness – but I guess it’s not a big deal if I buy firewood on the way up – as I always have electric lights I can use to the illuminate the campsite as I get set up.

As previously noted, next Monday is Strugeon Moon when the sun will be setting at 8:07 pm with dusk at 8:38 pm. On that day in 2016, we had partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 84 and 62 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 82 degrees. We hit a record high of 102 back in 1918.