Good morning! Happy Thursday. Today is the first day on average when the mercury starts dropping a bit as we head towards winter. It’s also four weeks to State Fair Opens. Summer is rapidly coming to a close. Cloudy but starting to lighten up after today’s rain and 69 degrees at the Finger Lakes National Forest outside of Watkins Glen. There is a southwest breeze at 6 mph. The dew point is 65 degrees. The skies will clear around 6 pm.

I do maintain that the reason why it’s been so wet and cold this week is because I brought my kayak out to the Finger Lakes. The one other time I did this was in late April 2016, and it was exceptionally cold up here on Hector’s Backbone. I do hope to get out kayaking tomorrow or Saturday from Seneca Lake to Montour Falls via the Montour Falls Canal. But that depends a lot on the weather. 

Today will have showers and possibly a thunderstorm. High of 73 degrees at 2pm. Nine degrees below normal. Maximum dew point of 66 at 12pm. West wind around 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. Might be okay at the pool. A year ago, we had sunny skies. The high last year was 90 degrees. The record high of 97 was set in 1955.

I am hopeful we are done with the rain. The skies have brightened a lot in the past hour and the rain has stopped. It looks like the radar shows that the rain impacting Rochester will stay north and won’t impact this area. 

As long as we don’t get thunderstorms, my plan for today is to first get ice then go to Watkins Glen. Going to walk in the gorge then go swimming. I suspect there will be a lot of water going through the gorge. Then I’ll go to the Glen Dairy Bar to get some ice cream. Not a beautiful day but you do what you can. 

The sun will set at 8:31 pm with dusk around 9:04 pm, which is one minute and 2 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly cloudy conditions and 70 degrees. The dew point will be 65 degrees. There will be a north-northwest breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 36 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 2 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be scattered showers and thunderstorms before midnight, then isolated showers between midnight and 3am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 61 degrees at 5am. One degrees below normal. Maximum dew point of 66 at 6pm. North wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. In 2016, we had partly clear skies. It got down to 65 degrees. The record low of 44 occurred back in 1971.

Yesterday I went to Taughannock State Park. There was a lot of water going over the falls for sure. Much different than last year. The trails were crowded because the falls were so impressive. I will post video later. The beach was full of children early on and kind of muddy but it got better in the afternoon when the kids left. The water didn’t seem real cold but that may be due to the cold air temperature. I also paddled about a mile or maybe a mile and a half along the shoreline of Cayuga Lake south of the park. That’s a big lake and it can be choppy at times so I was a bit nervous and stayed close to the shore. I will post those pictures and videos later. They are on my regular camera. 

On the way back to camp I stopped at Not My Dad’s Ice Cream place which isn’t my favorite but they have basic ice cream. I got raspberry soft ice cream. I got to get to the Watkins Glen Dairy Bar for the good stuff today. Got back to camp, had grilled cheese sandwiches. Had a small campfire mostly to burn up the camp garbage and just because I like fire and then retired to bed. 

Because of the shitty weather, I canceled the leg of my trip out to Pennsylvania. It makes no sense to go another 300 miles west, basically lose a whole day of the trip to travel when I’ve lost so much time to bad weather already. I’ll be back in Pennsylvania for my autumn trip, which will likely involve Virginia and West Virginia, and probably two nights staying in Pennsylvania, one each way. I might go through St Mary’s and see the elk in rut on the way down there. 

Looking ahead, there are 4 weeks until State Fair Opens when the sun will be setting at 7:53 pm with dusk at 8:22 pm. On that day in 2016, we had patches of fog, partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 85 and 57 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 79 degrees. We hit a record high of 95 back in 1947.