Good morning! Happy Flag Day. 🇺🇸 One week until summer. 🏖Mostly sunny and 64 degrees in Albany. Breezy, 16 mph breeze from the west 🌬 . The dew point is 54 degrees. An absolutely beautiful Flag Day.

I was up much too late last night, 💤 although honestly I got chased in by the rain. 🌧 The thunderstorm that rattled ⛈through in the north was kind of neat until the rain came by. I wanted to sit out back but that was not to be. I didn’t get home until nearly nine o’clock ⌚and by the time I was done with dinner🍲 it was too late to go for the evening walk. I did go to the store and buy ice cream 🍦 and milk. 🐄 Good stuff. I do need to get out and do more walking though. 🚶All week it’s been fairly late at work, 🍻 although on Tuesday night I went to the bar for a while after work, and it was very nice out on the patio. 🌃

I have to admit that this is likely to be a much nicer day then yesterday, which was Red Flag Day. 🎏 I like the Red White and Blue better than the Hammer and Sickle,🇷🇺 although I keep checking with quite some fascination the website USA Really, the website from the Russian Internet Agency which is out there to spread disinformation and pro Trump messages directly from the Russian government’s Internet Research Agency. That and Molon Labe. 🔫 And I don’t like restrictions on open burning 🔥🛢 but that’s a subject for another day. Hah.

I hear that stores are going to start having small fireworks again. 🎇 Sparklers and fountains are a lot of fun. I also like shooting off bottle rockets,🎆 but I will have to get down to Pennsylvania for that. Then save them for shooting off somewhere in the remote Adirondacks, way back in the woods. You know my view, I think guns, fireworks, drugs, fire, and big toys 🚛should be legal — at least out in the country where they ain’t harming no one. 🐑🐃

Today will have increasing clouds 🌞 , with a high of 71 degrees at 2pm. Seven degrees below normal. Maximum dew point of 54 at 8am. Breezy, with a west wind 16 to 21 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies. The high last year was 79 degrees. The record high of 96 was set in 1892.

The sun will set at 8:34 pm with dusk around 9:09 pm, which is 26 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for possible rain showers ☁ and 67 degrees. The dew point will be 52 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 14 mph. Today will have 15 hours and 17 minutes of daytime, an increase of 27 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a slight chance of showers. Mostly cloudy , with a low of 56 degrees at 5am. One degrees below normal. Maximum dew point of 53 at 6pm. Northwest wind 7 to 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies with some clearing in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 54 degrees. The record low of 42 occurred back in 1985.

Yesterday evening I got reading about software defined radio, which let’s you hook up a very inexpensive and common dongle to your laptop💻 and pick up all kinds of radio signals from FM radio to police to air traffic control to even over the air television and convert it into useful data on your computer.📻 The dongles are under $15 and work with free software on Linux. 🔌Might be a fun toy to play with.

The weather still looks good for the weekend. 😎Thinking about heading to the Gas Up in the morning 🚜 then camping and fishing the next day. Maybe some hiking but it’s going to be hot. ⛰ Hiking the Cliffs of Middleburgh will be fun.

Next week with the warmer weather, it will be downright hot with the heat and humidity. 💥Summer is going to really kick off with a bang, with lots of heat and humidity. It was going to happen eventually at any rate.🕶 Looking forward the swimming pools opening at the state parks next weekend, and hopefully soon I will have a chance to get up to Piseco-Powley Road and spend some quality time in the Potholers. 🏊

Looking ahead, there are 23 weeks until Thanksgiving 🦃 when the sun will be setting at 4:26 pm with dusk at 4:57 pm (Standard Time). On that day in 2017, we had rain, cloudy skies and temperatures between 46 and 34 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 45 degrees. We hit a record high of 70 back in 1931.