Good morning! Happy Saturday. Next Saturday is Earth Day 🌎. No kids, Rolling Coal doesn’t cause global warming. Mostly cloudy and 43 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ There is a north breeze at 11 mph. 🍃. A big gust of breeze came by and it’s cloudy to the north with sun to the south. Temperatures will drop below freezing around 1 am. ☃️

Today will have a chance of rain, mainly after 3pm. Mostly cloudy,⛅ with a temperature falling to around 37 by 5pm. North wind 13 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had sunny skies. The high last year was 64 degrees. Not this year though. The record high of 83 was set in 1968. 1.4 inches of snow fell back in 1950.❄ Hardly something to write back home about.

The sun will set at 7:36 pm with dusk around 8:06 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for clouds ☁ and 36 degrees. There will be a north-northeast breeze at 13 mph. Today will have 13 hours and 22 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 46 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will rain before 2am, then freezing rain and sleet. ☔ Low of 32 degrees at 2am. Five degrees below normal. Leave your windshield wipers up and prepare to wash your car off again this week. North wind 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. Little or no ice accumulation expected. New sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2017, we had mostly clear skies. It got down to 33 degrees. The record low of 21 occurred back in 1940.

It was nice down at the Town Park last night. 🌳Rather than stare at a screen, I brought a book📖 I had purchased years ago and was re-reading about renewable energy.📘Reading really is a very enjoyable thing especially with the fresh air down at the park. Reading this older book reminded me how much things have changed over the past decade. 🔧🔩 Certainly lighting technology has changed dramatically over the years, but most of the book is still quite relevant. People don’t think about insulation and vapor barriers but in many cases it’s actually more important to an energy efficient house than solar panels or fancy light bulbs. 🔋I don’t have the knowledge or the skills to do much home building but I am definitely interested in the electrical side of things, especially low voltage. 📟 I’m trying to become more educated though over the next ten years or so.

Starting to see green popping up at the park but it still gets dark quite early – about the same time that is common in late August.🌃 One of these days I’m going to do a chart or table on the blog that shows what one day’s average is most similar to the autumn season. 🎆For example, a 60 degree day in April is similar to certain day in October or a 7:30 sunset in April is equal to 7:30 sunset in early September. Not a difficult thing to calculate per se but quite fascinating.

I was going to have a beer out back but I don’t think the accessory battery has been fully charged in a while,⛔ so the protective relay has shut off the lights to the truck cap.🔋 I really need to get that solar panel mounted so it trickle charges all week long. 🚒Plus I’ve really cut back on drinking because it’s expensive and I have so little extra money to piss away🍺 and plus I wanted to work on wiring up the board I’m building.

Soldered on the pin headers for another Arduino Nano and are in the process of building another board for driving another of those MAX 7219 displays like the one that is now in my office. 💻I have the parts to build several more and this one will be an improved model with a 32kb external eeprom to allow many more random strings and quotes.⚡ I’m thinking of skipping the case on this one and mounting the display directly to the wall. I quit soldering last night when I discovered I had a dead short that I’m struggling to find.🔬 I’m going to keep unsoldering and testing leads to find where I’ve accidentally either burnt off insulation or caused a solder bridge. 🔎It’s not apparent where the problem is from studying the connections with the big magnifying glass built-in with my helping hands unit.

I think today is going to be a pretty busy day with work, but I’m hopeful I will be home before the freezing rain comes.💦 I think the risk of rain has fallen around here at least for today. But I’m going to watch the forecast like a hawk and as things evolve I’ll plan my day accordingly.👀 I struggle to accept that we are still dealing with winter crap now that calendar winter is in the rear view mirror and summer is closer than Ground Hog Day.

Still thinking but not 100% certain if after the Pine Bush hike if I will go up to the Adirondacks to fish and camp. ⛺ Depends a whole lot on the weather. At this point, what’s one more week if I can get a full weekend of camping out of it or maybe even a three day weekend.🎣 By then the sun will be setting later too which is a good thing.

As previously noted, next Saturday is Earth Day 🌎 when the sun will be setting at 7:44 pm with dusk at 8:14 pm. On that day in 2017, we had rain, drizzle, mist, cloudy skies and temperatures between 57 and 47 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 61 degrees. We hit a record high of 89 back in 1923.