February 7, 2020 Night

Good evening! Snow flurries but otherwise partly clear with a bright moonlit sky on the fresh but icy snow and 21 degrees in Delmar, NY. ❄ There is a west-northwest breeze at 14 mph. 🍃 with gusts up to 29 mph 💨💨💨. The current wind chill is 8. There is a inch of snow on the ground. β˜ƒ ️Things will start to thaw out at Sunday around 2 pm. 🌡️

Definitely a cold night with the wind but I turned up the heat before I left for work today and a few more degrees when I hit home so it’s very comfortable. With the mild weather all winter the heating bills have been quite modest. I stayed home and reheated the stuff shells mom made for my birthday 🎂. I rode the exercise bike for a half hour and then read 📖 more of that Almost President book. I played around with some code from the CDTA jquery stream but I doubt I’ll do much with it as I’ve run into a lot of cross origin issues with the browser and caching and fetching the data with my web hosting would be slow. Plus the CDTA website with the realtime map works well enough for me and I’m not that interested in sitting down and spending much more time coding it. 💻 I don’t like computer programming and writing software and scripts as much as I once did.

Tonight will have a slight chance of snow showers before 11pm. Areas of blowing snow before 11pm. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 16 degrees at 6am. Typical for tonight. Maximum wind chill around 5 at 6am; West wind 9 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 25 degrees. The record low of -16 occurred back in 1950.

Tonight will have a close to Full 🌝 Moon with 98% illuminated. Looks so bright out with the icy snow everywhere. At 10 PM, the moon was in the southeast (140Β°) at an altitude of 65Β° from the horizon, some 231,587 miles away from where you are looking up from the earth. 🚀 At the state speed limit of 55 mph, you’ll make it there by August 1st. It’s actually quite close relatively speaking but still – Buckle up for safety! 💺The moon is almost as high overhead tonight as the late summer sun. The Snow ❄ Moon is on Sunday, February 9. The darkest hour is at 12:10 am, followed by dawn at 6:35 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:04 am in the east-southeast (111Β°) and last for 3 minutes and 6 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 12 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 7:45 am with sun in the east-southeast (118Β°). Tonight will have 13 hours and 45 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 32 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 25 degrees at 1pm. Eight degrees below normal. West wind 8 to 13 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. That wind is going to make it feel frigid and it will only get colder as night falls tomorrow. We’ll we were overdue for some cold. Winter lately has been coming late. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 45 degrees. The record high of 52 was set in 1925. 14 inches of snow fell back in 1895.❄

Not totally sure what the plans are for tomorrow. I have a did sweep the snow off Big Red but she’s covered with ice from the change over. I’m hoping the sun will quickly melt the ice in the morning. β˜€ I might still go to Johnstown for the outdoors show but that’s a long trip for a relatively small little show especially if it’s too cold and windy to go skiing or camping there after. I’d almost rather stay home and save the gas if it’s frigid. Might also go out to the folks house tomorrow rather than Sunday as I’m concerned about snow on Sunday evening again.

In four weeks on March 6 the sun will be setting in the west (263Β°) at 5:51 pm,🌄 which is 35 minutes and 31 seconds later then tonight. As the first day of spring approaches the sun becomes close to due west for the sunset. In 2019 on that day, we had cold, mostly sunny, snow showers and temperatures between 22 and 9 degrees. I wonder if our March this year will be so cold. Typically, you have temperatures between 40 and 22 degrees. The record high of 63 degrees was set back in 1974.

Looking ahead, Valentines Day ❀️ is in 1 week, 7 PM Sunset 🌆 is in 5 weeks, Spring 🌷 is in 6 weeks, 7:30 PM Sunset 🌇 is in 2 months, Good Friday ✝️ is in 9 weeks, May 🕊 is in 12 weeks, Flower Moon 🌕 is in 3 months, 8:30 PM Sunset ️⛱️ is in 17 weeks and Strawberry Moon 🌕 is in 4 months.

🇺🇸🦅Only 104 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

Lake Champlain

I’ve been fascinated by Francisco Franco and how he stuck around as the dictator of Spain until his death in 1975

I’ve been fascinated by Francisco Franco and how he stuck around as the dictator of Spain until his death in 1975. Had Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini not decided to take an expansionist policy, invading surrounding countries, would have the global community tolerated them on grounds they were anti-communist through the 1960s and 1970s? That Rick Steves’ documentary I watched last night was very thought provoking.

You just lived through the warmest January on record

You just lived through the warmest January on record

For 421 straight months, Earth has been warmer than average.

January 2020 continued where 2019 left off, as the planet's relentless, long-term heating trend — stoked by skyrocketing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — resulted in the warmest global January on record, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.

January 2020 squeaked past January 2016 by just fractions of a degree (0.03 Celsius), but it's really the long-term heating trend that's important, not any individual month. Overall, 2019 was the second hottest year on record, 19 of the last 20 years are now the warmest on record, and high-temperature records now absolutely dominate low-temperature records.

NPR

Australia’s East Gets Drenched By Rain, And Flood Warnings Replace Fire Alerts : NPR

A month ago, Australians were praying for rain to put out horrific wildfires and save forests, animals and homes. A deluge is now falling on Australia's east coast — and while it's quashing stubborn fires, the water is also causing flash floods and other hazards.

The Bureau of Meteorology in New South Wales, the country's most populous state, warns of "very dangerous conditions" ranging from heavy rain to damaging winds.