Good afternoon! Today is Good Friday ✝️! Four weeks to Pack Rat Day 🐀. Nothing like a good fire to celebrate that. 🔥 Mostly cloudy and 67 degrees at the Five Rivers Environmental Education Center. ☁ There is a south breeze at 13 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 57 degrees. I figured that I had today off from work and it would be a nice thing to walk out here. Tomorrow is going to be rather wet and not much sun is expected until Easter Sunday. The skies will clear Sunday around 4 pm.

Ever since I’ve started walking out to Five Rivers Environmental Education Center I’ve started to appreciate it more. Walking out here you get to see the transitioning landscape from suburbia to a more rural landscape, 🐸 and somehow the nature seems more real than when you fly out here in motorized transportation. 🚙 Plus the walk is free 🚶 The rail trail 🚂is nice but it lacks the benches, bathrooms and solitude of the environmental education center.

Today will have a chance of showers, mainly after 3pm. Mostly cloudy 🌦, with a high of 72 degrees at 2pm. 12 degrees above normal, which is similiar to a typical day around May 23rd. Maximum dew point of 58 at 1pm. South wind around 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy. The high last year was 44 degrees. The record high of 92 was set in 1976. 8.8 inches of snow fell back in 1983.❄

I have no rush today at Five Rivers for a change, absolutely nothing planned for this afternoon. I can just sit an observe the natural world as long as I want. 🐦 Kind of nice for a change. Everything lately seems rushed or on a schedule.⌛

Ever since I started listening to John Burroughs books on Libre Vox, I’ve started to enjoy more and more nature study. 📙 Not necessarily just looking for one species but observing animal behavior. Maybe hunting and fishing got me started but there is much to learn in the woods and wilderness. 🌲Even just watching cows 🐮 march through rip and munch grass can be pretty fascinating to me. I used to be a much more of a go-go-go type person when I was younger in the woods but now I like to study and observe more.

The sun will set at 7:42 pm with dusk around 8:12 pm, which is one minute and 9 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain showers 🌧 and temperatures around 69 degrees. The dew point will be 58 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 10 mph. Today will have 13 hours and 35 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 43 seconds over yesterday.

Once I get back home this afternoon, I’ll have lunch and go down to the library. 📖 Mostly just to use the internet, maybe I’ll get a book out. Probably spend a few hours down there and maybe download some more videos to watch while riding the exercise bike. There is no shortage of videos this time of year on trout fishing, spreading manure or discing fields this time of year on the YouTube. Spring turkey too. Plus it’s interesting to find out what folks are doing on the many homesteading and off grid channels I follow. 🎧 To take it with me when I hike or ride the bus, I’ve written a script to convert the videos into audio files. Some videos really are better just to listen to the audio too.

Tonight will have showers and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce heavy rain. 🌧 Low of 64 degrees at 11pm. 25 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 62 at 4am. 🏖️ South wind 10 to 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible. In 2018, we had mostly clear in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 31 degrees. The record low of 19 occurred back in 1875.

Next weekends forecast is shaping up nicely. Depending if it stays on course I may very well just take off Thursday and Friday to go up to the Adirondacks. ⛺ That will be four nights in the wilderness which means I’ll have to move my site after three nights but I can relocate my campsite the day I head fishing 🎣 or hiking. 🚶 Lots of sun means lots of solar power which is great and hopefully I can rely primarily on the solar to keep the battery 🔋 charged. Looking forward to some nights in the wilderness.

Looking ahead, there are 4 weeks until Pack Rat Day 🐀 when the sun will be setting at 8:13 pm with dusk at 8:45 pm. On that day in 2018, we had mostly cloudy and temperatures between 80 and 59 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 70 degrees. We hit a record high of 92 back in 2017.