Good evening! Snow fairly hard out but I’m not sure I’d quite call it a white out, around 26 degrees in Delmar, NY. ❄ There is a north-northwest breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. There are 15 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️It just keeps snowing.

This has to be one of the biggest snowstorms Albany has gotten in a long time, certainly in December. We had that February storm a few years back but this might be bigger than that. I don’t know. The good news is come tomorrow morning it will be done with sun and warmer temperatures come the afternoon. Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around noontime. 🌡️

I didn’t think the roads were that bad when I went outside midday to clean off my truck ⛄ but maybe they’re worse other places. I’m sure it’s still not fun to drive anywhere with the amount of snow on them and it probably was worse in the evening. But what do I know, I live in the city.

It’s been a pretty productive extended Thanksgiving weekend 🍗prolonged by work being closed today by the weather. I got my propane camp lantern 🏮 taken apart and cleaned. I got the worse of the snow off Big Red so hopefully the clean up will be easy after the warmer weather later this week. I rolled over my maturing CD and reinvested that. 💿 Ordered that voltage sensitive switch from China that I’ll wire up once we get nice weather. I’ve done a bunch of research into rechargable LED lanterns to use for inside my tent and backpacking. 🎪 Made more maps up for the blog 🗾and got the pictures ready to upload from yesterday’s hike on the rail trail. And the big thing – launching the updated version of the blog is done. ✒

Did a bunch more reading 📖 about meat science 🍖 and butchering – there is a lot I didn’t know about meat. Most people eat meat but know very little about it. Adam Danforth does a good job explaining meat with lots of pictures. Rode the exercise bike 🚲 an hour and a half, also finished watching most of the YouTube videos I’ve downloaded over the past few weeks. 📹

Tonight will snow, mainly before 3am. 🌨 Low of 20 degrees at 5am. Six degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 18th. North wind 8 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches possible. That I can believe, it’s snowing out good now but at least it won’t last as you can see the backside of the storm on the radar. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 25 degrees. The record low of -1 occurred back in 1976. Getting into winter now that below zero record lows are popping up every day.

Tonight will have a Waxing Crescent Moon 🌒 with 48% illuminated. The moon will rise at 12:33 am. The First Quarter Moon will be tomorrow with a chance of snow showers. The Cold Moon 🌝 is on Wednesday, December 11th. The sun will rise at 7:06 am with the first light at 6:35 am, which is one minute and 4 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Mornings are getting really dark again. Tonight will have 14 hours and 44 minutes of darkness, an increase of one minute and 20 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny ⛅, with a high of 34 degrees at 1pm. Seven degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 20th. Northwest wind 8 to 14 mph. With the sun later in the day and wind it should start to chew away at snow but the sun angle is still weak. 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 63 was set in 2009. 5.2 inches of snow fell back in 1893.❄

In four weeks on December 30 the sun will be setting at 4:30 pm,🌄 which is 7 minutes and 43 seconds later then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had sunny skies and temperatures between 16 and -3 degrees. A lot of last December was pretty cold, especially the end of the month. Typically, you have temperatures between 32 and 16 degrees. The record high of 53 degrees was set back in 1984.

I better get some sleep. 👔I have to wear a suit and tie to work tomorrow and I want to be out early to catch the local downtown and also maybe run out brush the snow off the solar panel and the truck so it keeps the batteries well charged and things are ready to go come the weekend. So early day tomorrow. Goodnight! 😴

Looking ahead, Earliest Sunset of the Year ⌛️ is in 1 week and Festivus 🍖 is in 3 weeks.