Good morning! Yeah, it’s Friday! Next Friday is Buy Nothing Day 🛍️. HASH TAG waste your money on stupid plastic stuff. 💸↔️🗑 Clouds with some clearing and 44 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌥 There is a south breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is 30. Temperatures will drop below freezing at Sunday around 1 am. ☃️

Going one of the most pleasant Fridays in recent weeks. ⛅ Lots of sun and mild. It’s good, the past few days have been cool and I’ve had the heat on, especially working from home. But today it will be off and maybe crack open a window or two for fresh air.

Took the first shower 🚿 since Sunday. Working from home I don’t find the need to bathe 🛀🏻 nearly as regularly as I’m not getting dirty and nobody cares if you are unshaved or smelly when you are social distancing. 👃🏻 Plus it saves a lot of wash 👚 and water 💦 to wear the same clothes for multiple days.

A few rain drops 💧 as I go for my morning walk. 🚶🏻 But it’s reasonably warm to be walking for late November in a t-shirt 👕 with my vest over it. The air has a slight tang of barnyard and manure on it 🐮, but it’s November in Upstate NY. The sun ☀ certainly feels nice but at 10 or 15 degrees from the horizon it can only put out so much warmth.

Today will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 55 degrees at 2pm. Nine degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around October 29th. South wind 9 to 13 mph. A year ago, we had light snow in the morning, which became light drizzle by afternoon. The high last year was 37 degrees. The record high of 72 was set in 1991. 3.4 inches of snow fell back in 1961.❄

I have a virtual meeting this afternoon 📹 which I’ll probably just walk down to the library or town park to do. I also want to download some of that MIT Election Lab data so I can play ▶ with that during down time this weekend. 📚 I also should look at getting some books out of the library to read in the evening and maybe work on some electronics projects now that the long winter is upon us. Nothing like breathing in some fumes from lead solder in one’s bedroom. 🔬 Says the boy 🧒🏻 whose burned his share of plastics over the years. 🔥

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:42 am with sun having an altitude of 27.6° from the due south horizon (-43.3° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 11.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:47 pm with the sun in the southwest (236°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (244°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:30 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 14 seconds with dusk around 4:59 pm, which is 44 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter 🌓 Moon in the south (180°) at an altitude of 27° from the horizon, 240,016 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:35 pm. At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 54 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 9 mph. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 32 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 54 seconds over today.

I am glad my state inspection 🚘 🔍 is done and the new registration is on my truck. I always worry about it a lot, especially now that my tires are getting worn down. I drove only 6,700 miles since last year according to the odometer although that’s off by 13% due to the 35 inch tires. This year I didn’t go to Western NY or Pennsylvania and generally have been doing more social distancing so fewer trips to the store 🏬 but more to the library for remote work. Plus with the solar panel and the two accessory batteries 🔋 on my truck, I would generally set up camp and remain parked 🅿 for multiple days.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌃, with a low of 39 degrees at 4am. Nine degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 18th. South wind 5 to 8 mph becoming west after midnight. In 2019, we had clear skies in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 26 degrees. The record low of 7 occurred back in 1879.

Tomorrow will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 49 degrees at 12pm. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 14th. Northwest wind 6 to 14 mph. A year ago, we had light snow in the morning, which became light drizzle by afternoon. The high last year was 47 degrees. The record high of 70 was set in 1931. 0.8 inches of snow fell back in 1937.❄

Cool but hopefully sunny and warm enough for a pleasant walk 🚶🏻 to Five Rivers 🐦. Those blue birds were pretty that I saw there the other week. I am not expecting a ton of sun but I like the exercise. You never know what wildlife you will see while up there. 🦉

Looking ahead to Sunday, a chance of rain after 1pm. ☔ Mostly cloudy, with a high near 41. ☁️ Light and variable wind becoming southeast 5 to 7 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. Typical average high for the weekend is 46 degrees.

I’ll probably go out to the folks house on Sunday. 🍲 No big plans for Sunday, it might play with some of that Election Geodata I found on the MIT Election Lab 🔬 that I found the other night. Working from home 🏡 means less commuting time and sometimes downtime at work and no library to walk to weeknights or the weekend so I’ll have to figure new ways to keep busy during the long winter nights.

As previously noted, next Friday is Buy Nothing Day 🛍️ when the sun will be setting at 4:24 pm with dusk at 4:55 pm. On that day in 2019, we had partly sunny skies, rain showers and temperatures between 57 and 31 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 43 degrees. We hit a record high of 66 back in 1896.

I am hoping next weekend to get up to the Adirondacks ⛰ ❄ to do some hot tenting ⛺ and hiking during the three day weekend. That said, not sure about the long range forecast. Might be kind of rainy. I’ll have to drive back Sunday as I don’t want to drive back in the dark from the Adirondacks. Some years the snow and ice hold off until January and I can do trips until the end of the year. Based on the amount of junk mail ✉ I got yesterday, the mailman is rooting for me to go it next weekend – certainly will have plenty of paper to start fires with. 🔥