With five weeks remaining until March, tonight marks the first sunset after 5 pm in Albany. Dusk isn’t until 5:30.We are up to 33 degrees but the hope for much sunshine is a ways off. Maybe Sunday afternoon? To be fair, we might get enough breaks in the clouds to enjoy the first 5 PM sunset — but that’s about all the break we will get in the next 4-5 days. Fairly mild with temperatures expected to reach 42 degrees which is about ten degrees above normal. Today will have 9 hours and 45 minutes of daylight, an increase of 2 minutes and 9 seconds over yesterday.

The rail trail looks snow covered enough in the Normans Kill that it would be good for skiing but I doubt the snow will last into the weekend. Still might be able to go skiing in the Heldebergs. We will see. I wonder if Albany will have enough snow this year to ever have to declare a snow emergency. It’s been a couple of years since Albany has gotten enough snow to warrant a snow emergency. I think 2015 there was a snow emergency, as that year we got quite a bit of snow — I remember the snow banks and appreciating that I had just lifted my truck, so I could get through the snow banks and see over them a lot better then had my truck still been stock.

It seems like the town has done a great job at snow removal on the sidewalks in Delmar, as most of the way down to the Park and Ride, the sidewalks were ice free and salted for safe traction. There was a few years back after the town struggled with the climb out of the recession that salt and plowing maintenance of sidewalks declined but now they are in tip top shape. It helped that this year the snowstorms occurred on weekdays when snow removal personnel are mostly on duty and it was warm enough for salt to be effective on the sidewalks. It’s even better in fact knowing that they removed the snow and ice glaze on the sidewalks that accumulated over last night but still was on my driveway. There was a short section that wasn’t perfect with a dusting of ice and snow and no road salt — but I’m sure the crews will be battling it all day.

Traffic is moving very slowly downtown. There must be some kind of special event going on town because it seems like it is backed up all over downtown. I guess it doesn’t matter that much as I will still make it into the office on time, and it does give a little more time to finish up the blog post.

Looking ahead to tonight, we will have a slight chance of rain showers and sleet before 11pm, then a chance of rain showers, snow showers, and sleet between 11pm and midnight, then a chance of rain showers after midnight. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 34 degrees at 7pm. Very mild, not expected to fall below freezing with temperatures 20 degrees above normal. That will continue to make the snow disappear. South wind 5 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New snow and sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2016, it got down to 32 degrees under mostly cloudy skies. The record low of -17 occurred back in 1920.

As previously noted, there are 5 weeks until March 1st when the sun will be setting at 5:45 pm with dusk at 6:13 pm. I like coming home and there is still daylight, but then again, I also like my light sensitive switch that only turns on after dark. That way I don’t have to worry about coming home after dark, as the light switches on automatically. On that day in 2016, we had rain and temperatures between 38 and 21 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 39 degrees. We hit a record high of 61 back in 1991. By the time March concludes, the average high is around 51 degrees, which means snow if it falls, is rapidly melting, especially outside of the Adirondacks in most normal years.

I look forward to the nicer weather of March and April…. And eventually springtime, although I realize most years things don’t really green up until the first week of May and sometimes later. Some years we get an earlier springtime in the city, but most years it’s delayed until mid-May in the Adirondacks, with frost coming out of the backcountry roads until around black fly season aka Memorial Day Weekend.