Good morning! Today 5:30 PM Dusk 🌆. It will be nice when it’s bright 🔆 enough out that on a normal day I won’t have to worry about leaving the light on before work. Next Sunday is Ground Hog Day 🐻. Snow flurries mixed rain and 34 degrees in Delmar, NY. ❄ Calm wind.There is a inch of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Temperatures will drop below freezing at tomorrow around 5 am. ☃️

First time in a while I’ve had some issues waking up at night. 😴 It really helps that I dim the lights in my bedroom to that red color and use red light filters on my electronics. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and each morning including the weekends setting the alarm for six thirty ⏰ and making sure I’m out of bed by 6:45. I do sleep a lot better with the windows open especially after I spend some nights out in the wilderness. ⛺

Today will be scattered rain and snow showers, mainly before 1pm. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a high of 44 degrees at 2pm. 13 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 15th. Calm wind becoming southwest around 6 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 50%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 28 degrees. The record high of 59 was set in 1950. 8.5 inches of snow fell back in 1949.❄

I was hoping to get and do some hiking as the ground was frozen when went to Stewart’s to get milk 🐮 but it then started to snow and rain. I’ll probably stay home as anywhere I would hike would be real muddy although maybe I could wear my muck boots out to hike. 👢 Or somewhere like Partridge Run and road hike. Later on om heading out to my parents house 🏡 for Sunday dinner.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:09 pm with sun having an altitude of 28.6° from the due south horizon (-42.2° vs. 6/21). The golden hour 🏅 starts at 4:18 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (238°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (245°) starting at 4:57 pm and lasts for 3 minutes and 13 seconds with dusk around 5:30 pm, which is one minute and 17 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:05 pm. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ and temperatures around 42 degrees. There will be a southwest breeze at 6 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 44 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 8 seconds over yesterday.

Working on some maps for the blog 🗾 and some other content. I’ve not been doing as neat content for the blog lately as I’ve lost interest and I’ve been spending so much more time reading 📖 and riding the exercise bike 🚲. I’m trying to be healthier so that I have more time to enjoy in my life. The rather sudden death of Chet at age 73 reminds us all how suddenly short life can be. You just don’t think of a fairly healthy black powder guy who is a pretty tough guy catching pneumonia and dead in a few weeks.

I ordered a 18650 tactical style flashlight 🔦 on Aliexpress for camping plus two more Bluetooth dongles to use with my Bluetooth headphones 🎧. I find the built-in Bluetooth doesn’t work well with my headphones but the external ones work great. I’ve decided to no longer use wired headphones because when I’m home I like to be able to walk around and it seems like I’m always breaking the cords on the wires ones. Spent $7, I’ll have them before March, probably sooner.

Tonight will have isolated snow showers after 1am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 32 degrees at 6am. 18 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 1st. Pretty mild night ahead. Good for the heating bills. I’m sure cold weather is ahead later in February. Southwest wind 3 to 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 11 degrees. The record low of -23 occurred back in 1994.

🌹🌻🌼Only 53 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼

That means come the day before my birthday, it will be fifty days until spring. 🎂 Spring will be here before you know it or so I tell myself. I’m looking forward to the longer days and being able to spend more time in the wilderness. As much as I like reading books, watching videos off-grid families and homesteaders I miss the wilderness. Eventually I’ll get out of city.

As previously noted, next Sunday is Ground Hog Day 🐻 when the sun will be setting at 5:09 pm with dusk at 5:39 pm. On that day in 2019, we had mostly cloudy and temperatures between 32 and -2 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 32 degrees. Perfect for the average 👌 although the night was cold. I believe the Ground Hog saw his shadow but I could be wrong, I didn’t check the record. We hit a record high of 53 back in 1981.