Good evening! Partly cloudy and 18 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a west-southwest breeze at 8 mph. The current wind chill is 0. The skies will clear around 2 pm. That’s actually fairly typical for this time of year, warmer certainly then last night. So I’m not complaining. 

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 6 above at 6am. 11 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -3 at 6am; Calm wind becoming southwest around 6 mph after midnight. In 2017, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 31 degrees. The record low of -14 occurred back in 1970.

Tonight will have a Waning Gibbous Moon with 98% illuminated. Did you see that beautiful Wolf Moon yesterday? Today’s moon was pretty close but not as dramatic. The moon will set tomorrow at 8:36 am. The Last Quarter Moon is on Sunday night with a mostly cloudy then slight chance of snow skies. The Blue Moon is in 4 weeks. The sun will rise at 7:25 am with the first light at 6:53 am, which is one second later than yesterday. Tonight will have 14 hours and 51 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 55 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be sunny, with a high of 27 degrees at 1pm. Three degrees below normal. Close to reasonable. South wind 5 to 7 mph. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 37 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1913. 12 inches of snow fell back in 2003.

This evening I worked on folding the Pine Bush newsletter at Reszin house, then I came home on the local bus, had dinner and walked down to the library, primarily to return that DVD I borrowed on Sunday. Sidewalks are still a bit icy but the town cleared them up a bit. 

Cold but sunny this weekend, especially Saturday. Saturday, mostly sunny and cold, with a high near -1. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 14. Typical average high for the weekend is 31 degrees.

In four weeks on January 30 the sun will be setting at 5:07 pm, which is 32 minutes and 52 seconds later then tonight. In 2017 on that day, we had snow, mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 30 and 17 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 31 and 15 degrees. The record high of 56 degrees was set back in 2013.

I’m very happy with the LED fixtures I ordered. I just need to cut the LED strips, solder and mount them now. That’s a project for the weekend. Then I’ll work on the MAX7219 LED Matrix sign and also start playing with the individually addressable LEDs which will become a big  full color sign. I’m not totally sure what I will use the MAX7219 modules for ultimately but maybe a countdown counter or something like that. For now I’ll run it off my USB port and the Arduino, feeding data in over the serial port. 

Looking ahead, National Pie Day is in 3 weeks, Ground Hog Day is a month away, Lame Duck is in 5 weeks, First Day of Spring is in 11 weeks, Election Day 2018 is in 44 weeks and Election Day 2020 is in 148 weeks.

Only 142 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend! I am now counting this down every day now that we are in the New Year. Hopefully the black fly season won’t be so bad this year.