March 14, 2021 Morning

Good morning! Happy 7 PM Sunset πŸŒ‡ ! The clocks have moved forward one hour, at least on your computer and anywhere else you’ve changed them. Two weeks to Worm Moon πŸŒ• . Partly sunny and 34 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a west-northwest breeze at 9 mph. πŸƒ. Temperatures will drop below freezing at around 4 pm. β˜ƒοΈ

Always the first day of daylight savings time the time goes by quickly, βŒ› as to be expected. Nice sunny morning, but breezy and kind of cool. I should probably go for a hike before it gets too frigid this afternoon with the wind picking up and then maybe some precipitation as the front comes roaring through. It might have been a nice day had I decided to go north, although yesterday was fun between exploring the Hollyhock Sanctuary for the first time, 🐦 and then to Papscanee Island. I ran into an avid birder down there and he took me on quite the bird hike. Then I spent some time down by the river 🏞 and then went to Aldi’s. πŸ› There is a few things that I couldn’t get a Aldi’s or forgot, like coffee and razors for shaving, so I might end up going to Wally World later on as probably having coffee with the time change is good.

Today will be scattered rain and snow showers between noon and 3pm, then scattered snow showers after 3pm. Partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 39 degrees at 12pm. Four degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 3rd. Windy, with a northwest wind 9 to 14 mph increasing to 23 to 28 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 49 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. The high last year was 46 degrees. The record high of 75 was set in 1946. 17 inches of snow fell back in 2017.❄

Heading out to my parents house later for Sunday dinner. πŸ₯¬πŸ€πŸ₯© They’re doing corn beef and cabbage for Saint Patricks Day. I do want to stop at the store and get coffee. β˜• I was thinking about hiking Blodgett Hill this afternoon, but I am thinking that might be very frigid with the wind.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 1:05 pm with sun having an altitude of 45Β° from the due south horizon (-25.8Β° vs. 6/21). Halfway to the zenith, although unless you live south of the Tropic of Capricorn you’ll never see the sun up that high in the sky. Seventy is about as high as we get. A six foot person will cast a 6 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour πŸ… starts at 6:24 pm with the sun in the west (261Β°). πŸ“Έ The sunset is in the west (268Β°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:01 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 54 seconds with dusk around 7:28 pm, which is one minute and 11 seconds later than yesterday. πŸŒ‡ At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent πŸŒ’ Moon in the west (262Β°) at an altitude of 10Β° from the horizon, 249,719 miles away. πŸš€ The best time to look at the stars is after 8:02 pm. At sunset, look for partly clear skies πŸŒ„ and temperatures around 28 degrees. The wind chill around sunset will be 14. β˜ƒοΈ Breezy, 24 mph breeze β›… from the northwest with gusts up to 44mph. Today will have 11 hours and 52 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 55 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy πŸŒƒ, with a low of 10 degrees at 6am. A very chilly night for mid-November, roughly 15 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -5 at 6am; Blustery, with a northwest wind 17 to 22 mph, with gusts as high as 39 mph. In 2020, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 27 degrees. The record low of 1 occurred back in 1993.

Today in 1900, the Gold Standard Act is ratified, πŸ’°placing United States currency on the gold standard. πŸ’΅ 30 years later, they would realize that was a bad idea during the Great Depression, because it meant that they couldn’t stimulate the economy by printing money and forcing banks to loan more money. πŸ› Then, eventually they fully abandoned gold convertibility in the 1970s, because the world economy had grown far larger then the world’s gold supply. It seems kind of silly these days to build an economy around a pretty but relatively useless soft and shiny metal, although it does have some value as a coating for good electrical conductivity in things that need to be super conductors.

🌹🌻🌼Only 6 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼 Today and certainly Monday won’t feel like spring, but the days will certainly have more daylight in the evenings. Next Saturday, the sun will be setting at 7:08 pm with dusk at 7:37 pm. On that day in 2020, we had mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 46 and 28 degrees. Which is normal for this time of year. We hit a record high of 78 back in 1921.

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While going to work or school in the darkness would kind of a drag, I wonder if it would reduce carbon emissions to go to year round daylight savings time ? πŸŒ…

Right now, power demand is very low in early morning hours, but there is a lot of generation, especially from wind coming on top of all the base-load plants that can’t be shutdown when demand is low. An earlier start would mean that people would be turning their lights on earlier and ramping up heating and air conditioning earlier in the morning, when there is typically more of a surplus of electricity on the grid, especially in areas with a lot of wind power. It might be a good way to tame the evening ramp, when they most have to fire up the really dirty power plants to meet demand.
 
In 1974, they implemented national year-round daylight savings time. They weren’t wrong with year round daylight savings time when it came to regions with energy shortages in 1970s — at least from an energy conservation perspective. Maybe the 1965 black out wouldn’t have occurred, had it still been daylight savings time — and grid not heavily loaded when things started to go wildly out of control.
 
The 1965 black out occurred at 5:16 PM, at the peak of rush hour. It was a cold November evening, and with the time change, people had turned on their lights across New York, cranked up their electric heat, and the subways were going full-blast, all loading grid heavily compared to a few hours earlier. Had the sun still been out at 5:16 PM, the lighting load and heating load would have been a fair bit lower and fewer subway cars running, especially back then when more people worked 9-5 PM.
 
But it sure would make winter mornings very dark.

Not planning on my morning walk on Monday

Not planning on my morning walk on Monday. 🚢‍♀️

I just don’t see that being much of a likelihood with the time change, my inability to get going in the morning, and of course the the fact that the expected high is only going to be 30 degrees and quite windy. I like my morning walk, but sometimes it’s just better to skip it.