Good morning! What day is it? December 20th! It Rhythms with Boston Bump Day, of course. Two days until Winter Officially Kicks Off. Two weeks to State of the State Day. It will start all over, and hopefully be summer before you know it. I know, we are 180 degrees out phase. Partly cloudy and 33 degrees in Elsmere as the bus takes me downtown. Breezy, 20 mph breeze from the west-northwest with gusts up to 39 mph. The current wind chill is 21. It was very windy when I first got up, less so at the bus stop, and now quite windy downtown. It looks like Syracuse is once again getting hit by Lake Effect but I expect nothing but mostly clear skies with a good breeze today, but still warm enough to keep melting the snow in this area.
Today will be partly sunny, with a high of 36 degrees at 12pm. Two degrees above normal. Breezy, with a northwest wind 18 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 39 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies with more clouds in the afternoon. The high last year was 28 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1957. 8.4 inches of snow fell back in 1975.
The sun will set at 4:24 pm with dusk around 4:56 pm, which is 28 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly sunny conditions and 32 degrees. The wind chill around sunset will be 20. Breezy, 18 mph breeze from the west-northwest with gusts up to 28mph. Today will have 9 hours and 2 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 4 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will be mostly clear, with a low of 19 degrees at 5am. One degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 10 at 6am; Northwest wind 7 to 14 mph. In 2016, we had mostly cloudy skies, clearing in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 19 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1942.
I stayed up too late, working on soldering together the shield I am building to control the LED strings. I have one of the channels wired but I realized I swapped two wires so I need to fix that and test it out. It plugs directly into the top of the Arduino for easy and reliable connections. Some of the solder connections are a bit messy and I burned the board with the iron a little bit but it’s coming together. Tonight is the Save the Pine Bush Dinner so I don’t think I will get much further, but hopefully it will be up and working by the weekend. Even if this model doesn’t come out perfect, it will be a prototype, and I can build a neater model later on, although to build another model I will probably have to order more Mosfet transistors and possibly more resistors. Maybe this weekend I will work more on this project. I want to get it done so next I can build my sign with the programmable LEDs. If I want to those inexpensively, I probably should order them now, because the cheapest places are shipping them directly from China. As I am envisioning building a sign that is 3 or 4 foot by 1 foot, that means I will need quite a few programmable LEDs.
While I am Democrat, I am quite happy that I will be getting a fair bit more money each paycheck after the tax reform becomes law. I hate all of this crazy partisanship these days. Based on the NY Times calculator, it will work out to be like $50 more a month, which is a nice little raise. I will probably just put the money into some kind of investment or savings, although I am skeptical about putting more money in any kind of US-based stock market following fund, because I think we are due for recession. Businesses have been anticipating the tax break for a long time, so it’s already raised the stock market every bit that it can. And I think we’ve been ignoring the fundamental problems of the oil and fossil energy market and climate change for too long, and some point we are going to find out the fracking and oil boom was mostly false promises that only are going to last a short time. That said, I think Democrats concerns about “exploding” the deficit are hyperbole at best, as the deficit remains quite affordable, especially with low interest rates. If the deficit grows too much, we can always raise taxes on high earners once again to 39.5% or maybe even a bit higher. With the lower corporate taxes and improved laws on pass-through income, we can certainly afford to raise taxes on the wealthy and maybe implement a new carbon tax.
Yesterday on Facebook I saw this ad for South Dakota, that argued that SD is one of the hottest places for millennials to move to and raise a family. I can’t imagine that there is anything that warm in the winter in that state except sitting next to a woodstove. I’ve heard that the economy is pretty strong for a rural state thanks to the oil industry in North Dakota and the badlands look beautiful as does it proximity to the great wild lands and Rocky Mountains of Wyoming. I’m sure the hunting and fishing probably is good there and certainly the government is very laid back there. I wonder public land recreational opportunities is in South Dakota. I’ve heard codes issues and zoning are pretty relaxed in that state, along with relaxed restrictions on guns, open burning and agriculture. Maybe it’s something to keep in mind, all because I saw an advertisement. Hah!
As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until State of the State Day when the sun will be setting at 4:34 pm with dusk at 5:06 pm. On that day in 2017, we had rain, drizzle, freezing drizzle, mist, cloudy skies and temperatures between 37 and 31 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 61 back in 1913.