Good morning! Yeah, it’s Friday! One week closer to spring. Five weeks to Good Friday ✝️ . Mostly cloudy and 23 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind.There is two inches of snow on the ground. ☃ We lost a lot yesterday with the warmer temperatures and sun. Rest will be gone by Sunday. Things will start to thaw out at around 10 am. 🌡️

It looks like we might get some snow showers for my morning walk, but after then it will clear out and be a pretty nice day for the last weekday of February. Then it’s onto March and one month into the lockdown. At least I’ve been enjoying my walks around the neighborhood. Last night was really nice with the stars and the nearly full snow moon, almost thought about sitting out back for a while last evening. Maybe if I take a hot shower, it will help with the back. It’s pretty bad.

Feeling a bit stiff and sore this morning, it’s like I pulled a muscle in my back in bed last night or something. That said, I slept well until of course the sun started coming into my windows. Dawn is at 6:07 AM, which makes sense as in a little over a week, we set the clocks ahead one hour, and get up an hour earlier for work from home. But I am looking forward to having daylight well into the evening.

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 38 degrees at 3pm. Typical for today. Light and variable wind becoming west around 5 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had light rain in the morning, which became mist by afternoon. The high last year was 41 degrees. The record high of 63 was set in 1976. 8.4 inches of snow fell back in 1972.❄

Sounds like such a nice day, that I am thinking of going down to the library again in the afternoon, as I want to work on some map projects and get some data for various projects. Plus I am hoping to save some data today so I have extra to use tomorrow, especially as it’s going to be a rainy stay at home day. With my back such a mess, I think the seat in my truck will be so much more comfortable then my awful wooden seat on a paint bench that I use at home. Plus, even though I don’t like to use the gas, I get tired of being stuck at home at the time. I do have a one o’clock meeting, but I can probably boot Windows and use Zoom from there.

I am quite excited about QGIS 3.18. The new features are pretty nice, small, incremental but useful improvements. While I couldn’t figure out how to directly convert Point Clouds to Digital Elevation Models in the new version of QGIS, it’s really nice you can load them directly in QGIS and inspect the points clouds before converting them over with pdal. There probably is way, I just haven’t figured it out. Maybe I’m not very bright and there isn’t a lot of instruction for the released on Wednesday new version. If you don’t have it, I suggest running sudo apt update; sudo apt -y upgrade.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:09 pm with sun having an altitude of 38.8° from the due south horizon (-32° vs. 6/21). Pushing forty in a few days. A six foot person will cast a 7.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 5:04 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (253°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (259°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 5:42 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 57 seconds with dusk around 6:09 pm, which is one minute and 15 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Full 🌝 Moon in the east (81°) at an altitude of 13° from the horizon, 233,943 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:43 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 35 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 6 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 50 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of snow after 4am. Increasing clouds 🌃, with a low of 28 degrees at 11pm. Eight degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 22nd. South wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2020, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 26 degrees. The record low of -13 occurred back in 1940.

I got shopping yesterday, so I should be good with groceries for the week, although I forgot a few things that I probably don’t need at any rate like cereal. Probably healthier to snack on the frozen fruit directly without the carbohydrates of cereal . Trying to save money at rate.

Tomorrow will rain and snow, becoming all rain after 9am. 🌧 High of 45 degrees at 3pm. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 17th. South wind 7 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had light rain in the morning, which became mist by afternoon. The high last year was 42 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1997. 3.6 inches of snow fell back in 2019.❄

Looking ahead to Sunday, a chance of rain, mainly after 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 44. West wind 5 to 10 mph becoming south in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. Typical average high for the weekend is 38 degrees.

🌹🌻🌼Only 22 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼 That means only 3 weeks of winter left, for those who are good at the maths. Even if you are a math flunky like mes, you can’t deny that the weather is moderating. I am enjoying keeping the heat lower, although I am really looking forward to the fresh air after opening my windows and having the heat totally off.

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Last Day of Winter 🏂 when the sun will be setting at 7:06 pm with dusk at 7:34 pm (Daylight Savings Time). On that day in 2020, we had rain and temperatures between 51 and 38 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 46 degrees. We hit a record high of 78 back in 2012.