Good evening! Mostly cloudy and 21 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind.The skies will clear Tuesday around 10 pm. Looks like the next week will be quite mild with possible rain next Saturday. Should melt away the snow and ice we have locally. Up north it will probably last fine. 

Tonight will have a chance of light snow, mainly after 2am. Cloudy, with a low of 20 degrees at 10pm. Typical for tonight. Light and variable wind. Chance of precipitation is 50%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2016, we had light freezing drizzle in the evening, which became light rain and mist by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 20 degrees. The record low of -9 occurred back in 1919.

Tonight is the new moon but still too cloudy to really see the stars well. The sun will rise at 7:20 am with the first light at 6:48 am, which is 38 seconds later than yesterday. Tonight will have 14 hours and 57 minutes of darkness, an increase of 13 seconds over last night. Nights are getting longer but not by much. 

Tomorrow will have a chance of snow showers before noon, then a slight chance of rain and snow showers between noon and 1pm, then a slight chance of rain showers after 1pm. Cloudy, with a high of 37 degrees at 2pm. Two degrees above normal. Light south wind increasing to 5 to 9 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had light snow and mist in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 45 degrees. The record high of 60 was set in 1921. 17 inches of snow fell back in 1887.

This evening I went out grocery shopping at Shoprite then for my evening walk. I should be set for groceries for the week. I thought Shoprite would be a bigger savings over Walmart but I’m not convinced that is true. It just seems like groceries have gotten more expensive in recent years, although some of that may have to do with the fact I tend to like to mix things up more now and no longer just have boring cheese and ham sandwiches five days a week for lunch. I haven’t done my evening walk in a long time but tonight turned out to be quite pleasant. Also got milk at Stewarts so I should be good for the week. I thought about grocery store milk but Stewart’s is actually quite a bit cheaper especially for their one percent milk. It has 25% less fat than 2% but more taste then skim. I love living two doors down from Stewart’s because I’m such a big milk drinker. 

I took another stab at using that lead free solder but it’s still not working well for me. Hopefully the 60-40 solder will arrive soon, so I can get my components mounted on perfboard. I want to free up my breadboard to build other projects. I was reading about using addressable LED strips to make a banner sign, something like 1 foot by 5 foot that I could print out colorful messages. I could think of many ways to put that to use. They are natively driven at 12 volt, although I have heard they are fairly power hungry, easily taking 5 or more amps at 12 VDC. Might not be perfect for flashing messages while camping. But could be used around the house or maybe even as a work project. I still haven’t bought the bar I will permanently mount the LEDs onto or a hot glue gun to put everything together but I’ll do that eventually. 

Never got out hiking today but that’s fine. I was kind of lazy but I got the first big update to my blog done on a while. Still have some bugs to fix and I want to add Facebook Live posts to my blog automatically, especially when I am out camping or about.  I didn’t want to drive too much this week because I’m trying to save money for a possible camping trip next weekend. 

The long range doesn’t look that great for next weekend. Mild but wet! Next Saturday, rain likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 47. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Next Sunday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 38. Typical average high for the weekend is 33 degrees. At least I’ll be saving on my heating bills. I have Christmas Day and the day after off the following week, so that may be when I go camping but I’ll have to watch the forecast first. It would be nice to spend some time up north during the Christmas break. 

In four weeks on January 14 the sun will be setting at 4:46 pm, which is 23 minutes and 13 seconds later then tonight. Longer days! In 2017 on that day, we had mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 26 and 14 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 30 and 14 degrees. The record high of 66 degrees was set back in 1932.

Looking ahead, Christmas Eve is in 1 week, New Years Eve is in 2 weeks, National Hug Day is in 5 weeks, Winnie the Pooh Day is in 9 weeks and April Fools Day and Easter is in 15 weeks.