Good afternoon! Yet another Monday. Not that they are much different then Sundays these days for me. Four weeks until Veterans Day is Observed (Monday) 🇺🇸. Cloudy and damp, 51 degrees in Syracuse. 🌧 You probably should keep your umbrella handy, might pick up on this cold and gray afternoon. ☔ There is a east-southeast breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 49 degrees. The skies will clear tomorrow around 8 am.

Today will have a chance of sprinkles with scattered showers before 1pm, then showers, mainly after 1pm. High of 62 degrees at 2pm. Two degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 55 at 2pm. 🏖️ Southeast wind 5 to 13 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies. It became somewhat humid as the day progressed. The high last year was 74 degrees. The record high of 86 was set in 1897. There was a dusting of snow in 1939.❄

The sun will set at 6:21 pm with dusk around 6:50 pm, which is one minute and 38 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain ☁ and 57 degrees. The dew point will be 53 degrees. There will be a west breeze at 15 mph. Today will have 11 hours and one minute of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 51 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have showers likely, mainly before 10pm. Mostly cloudy , with a low of 40 degrees at 6am. Typical for tonight. West wind around 18 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2017, we had mostly clear skies with more clouds in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 39 degrees. The record low of 25 occurred back in 1978.

Last night, when I got back to the place I was staying, I washed my clothes and ended up staying up too late reading about electricity and isolation transformers. 👕 Electricity is kind of a strange beast, voltage is defined as difference in charge between two objects. ⚡ Typically household electricity is grounded to the earth, which has a fairly stable charge level across the level. The voltage carried on the wires, via the hot side is difference in charge from the ground. But you don’t have to reference voltage to the ground, you can reference it against another conductor like a wire. For safety purposes and noise isolation, isolation transformer reference the voltage against the neutral wire rather then the ground. So if you touch the hot wire while touching the physical no current will flow. It’s a complicated thing at first, but when you think about it’s quite simple.

There are 22 days, 9 hours and 38 minutes until the poll close on Election Day in New York. 🗳 Tick, tick, tick. Tomorrow marks three weeks, until that point and about 3 1/2 weeks until my vacation starts. I still need to think about getting a permit to Hicks Run if I’m thinking about spending a few nights down in Elk Country.🦌 I’m still chewing over that possibility. I’m not totally set on that — I might end up spending more time in New York. It’s really on the list of things to be decided. 🤔 It might depend on the weather, but if that’s the case, I should call early to get my permit 🎫 and if I don’t use it’s free and doesn’t really matter.

Looking ahead, there are 4 weeks until Veterans Day Observed (Monday) 🇺🇸 when the sun will be setting at 4:43 pm with dusk at 5:13 pm (Standard Time). On that day in 2017, we had mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 44 and 22 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 49 degrees. We hit a record high of 68 back in 1909.