After they spent millions rebuilding Kelley Stand Road after Hurricane Irene, including blasting it out of the mountain, it's still a narrow, tight, and steep road. I guess that's the charm of it, but gawd, that one turn onto the bridge across the Roaring Brook is awful tight for anything but a compact car.
"Researchers have generally blamed the performance gap on careless work by builders, overly complicated energy-saving technology, or the bad behaviors of the eventual occupants of a building. But in a new study, Coley and his co-authors put much of the blame on inept energy modeling. The title of the study asks the provocative question “Are Modelers Literate?” Even more provocatively, a press release from the University of Bath likens the misleading claims about building energy performance to the Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which actual emissions from diesel engine cars were up to 40 times higher than “the performance promised by the car manufacturer.”
Good morning, well almost afternoon! Happy Memorial Day. Rainy day around 55 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a south-southeast breeze at 10 mph. The dew point is 49 degrees. I hope you enjoy the rain, it will be occurring at least through Wednesday and maybe more on Friday. It looks like we will be stuck on this pattern for a while.
Today, Memorial Day will have periods of rain. High of 61 degrees at 4pm. 12 degrees below normal. Maximum dew point of 54 at 3pm. South wind 7 to 11 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. A year ago, we had thunderstorm, rain, mostly sunny skies and a high of 89 degrees. The record high of 93 was set in 1931.
The sun will set at 8:24 pm with dusk around 8:58 pm, which is 50 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for rain showers and temperatures around 59 degrees. The dew point will be 53 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 8 mph. Not very good for Memorial Day Barbecues. Today will have 15 hours and 3 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 24 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will have scattered showers, mainly before 7pm, then patchy drizzle with isolated showers after 9pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 54 degrees at 4am. Two degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 54 at 6pm. Southeast wind 6 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2016, it got down to 65 degrees with a thunderstorm and rain. The record low of 33 occurred back in 1967.
There are 2 months until National Lasagna Day when the sun will be setting at 8:18 pm with dusk at 8:50 pm. I’m not sure who bakes lasagna in the middle of the summer but I guess it’s a change from all those burgers and hot dogs.
I am glad that I packed up yesterday, so I’m not dealing with wet gear this morning. Wet gear sucks, especially tarps to dry out. The mud has dried up on my gear and could easily be knocked off it.
I feel a little congested from the rain, maybe it’s due to the fact that I’m laying in bed and should be sitting up. I got to make breakfast and finish up by putting the camping gear in the attic.
I’m going to call about getting an oil change this week in Glenmont. I always used to do it myself but it’s so messy and wastes a Saturday I could be out doing things. And I always worry about somehow messing up the process. I should be able to have a garage do it in 15 minutes rather than two plus hours when you figure the time of buying oil and a filter, screwing around to get the filter off, spilling oil everywhere and taking the oil back to the store for recycling.
I might go camping next weekend but I doubt it. I don’t think that the forecast looks that great and it will be pretty cool with rain showers but maybe some sun on Saturday. The continued rain for next week makes me think the woods will be quite saturated and the black flies intense. Maybe do a day hike or go fishing instead.
The following weekend is the first week of the Gas Up Festival in Gallupville. I’ll have to see if dad wants to go this year but one weekend I want to go myself so I can poke around some more and get some of that homemade ice cream made with the antique engine and ice cream machine. I am thinking I might bring a tent in camp in the back country in Schoharie County, like at Dutch Hollow or Cole Hill State Forest. Then also hike back to the Cliffs of Middleburgh. I could do Burnt Rossman and truck cap camp but that’s a bit of a trip from Gallupville.
Mine Kill pool opens on June 24th, the first Saturday of summer. It will be open until Labor Day from 10-6 pm. I like that pool because it’s free and close enough to Burnt Rossman State Forest for camping and that part of the Catskills is always quite pretty in the summer. Plus all those great vegetables at the Schoharie Valley farm stands.
I think before I go to my parent’s house for Memorial Day dinner, I’m going to the car wash to clean off the mud. I also need to take the kayak racks off before then but it’s not a big deal.
I think I’m going to keep that big 4.8 watt LED string I bought the other day for hanging at camp. It was kind of an impulse purchase after I saw how low wattage they were. $20 ain’t going to break my budget. I haven’t used yet because I have other strings and with the laser lights to work well, the woods has to relatively dark.
"That legal assessment of the defeat device scandal seems to have held up as the researchers analyzed the cars’ code. The VWs and Audis in question checked for a number of parameters at startup, and if a lab test was a possibility, the car would start with that assumption, enabling full emissions controls. The code permitted the car “to operate... as if two distinct personalities took turns controlling the vehicle,” the paper’s authors wrote.
The paper also notes that the researchers tested the diesel Fiat 500X because it used the same Engine Control Unit from Bosch as the Volkswagens and Audis did. There was no mention of the “acoustic condition” in the Fiat’s function sheet, but some undisclosed code was discovered controlling how the car regenerates its NOx Storage Catalyst (NSC).
“Unlike the Volkswagen defeat device, the FCA [Fiat Chrysler Automobiles] mechanism relies on time only, reducing the frequency of NSC regenerations 26 minutes 40 seconds after engine start,” the paper notes. In a normal system, the NSC reduces NOx emission by trapping it in a catalyst and then regenerating the catalyst as it gets full.
But regeneration hurts a car’s fuel economy numbers and puts a lot of load on the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF). “By reducing the frequency of NSC regeneration, a manufacturer can improve fuel economy and increase DPF service life, at the cost of increased NOx emissions,” the researchers explained."
Even on a dark and rainy evening, the Green Mountains are pretty.
Saturday morning, taking you for a little tour of my campsite at the Green Mountain National Forest.