Kind of a somber morning as we remember the lives lost in the Silver Bridge Disaster, 49 years ago today. Such a tragedy of enormous proportions in Point Pleasant, WV, especially only a little more than a week before Christmas. If anything good came out of it, we rethought how we inspected and built bridges so fracture critical bridges are no longer built and older bridges are throughly inspected yearly or even every six months if risk factors are high enough. There are many tragedies in American history but the timing of the complete failure of Silver Bridge is just so tragic. It just sad to think about all those young kids who grew up with out parents and grandparents due to the bridge failure.

Radio announcer keeps insisting its so cold outside, but I don’t know. I left the heat turned up to sixty last night and the thermostat always overrides up stairs were my bedroom is. So it didn’t feel cold inside as it usually is due to me normally turning the heat down to 50 before bed. It was a quick sprint out to the local bus stop and under the blue skies, it didn’t feel cold. Let’s talk about the cold when the mercury drops a few more degrees tomorrow.

The actual mercury is about 18 degrees in Delmar. In non sheltered locations there is a west breeze at 15 mph. That put into a big fancy formula makes for a wind chill around 4. Probably colder downtown with the wind. Honestly I didn’t notice the cold that much, but I certainly didn’t linger outdoors today. Later on today we will climb maybe a degree with continued sunny skies except when snow showers interrupt the sun. Breezy, with a west wind 15 to 20 mph decreasing to 9 to 14 mph in the afternoon.

That said, today is pretty cold compared to last year, when we had record breaking weather. A year ago, we had rain and a high of 61 degrees. Highest temperature ever recorded for December 15th in Albany. 8.2 inches of snow fell back in 1968. The sun will set at 4:23 pm with dusk around 4:55 pm, which is 17 seconds later than yesterday. Today will have 9 hours and 3 minutes of daylight, a decrease of 24 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of snow showers, mainly before 9pm. Mostly cloudy during the early evening, then gradual clearing, with a low of 2 degrees at 6am. 20 degrees below normal. Wind chill values as low as -14. Windy, with a northwest wind 21 to 26 mph decreasing to 11 to 16 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 47 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2015, it got down to 35 degrees under mostly cloudy skies. The record low of -11 occurred back in 1917.

On Obama’s Last Day in 5 weeks, the sun will be setting at 4:53 pm with dusk at 5:23 pm. On that day in 2016, we had snow and temperatures between 23 and 13 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 30 degrees. We hit a record high of 62 back in 1929.