Good evening! Mostly cloudy and 61 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a south breeze at 14 mph with gusts up to 24 mph. The dew point is 45 degrees. The skies will clear tomorrow around 5 am. Due to the injury to my hand, I expect this note to be quite short. 

Tonight will be scattered showers, mainly before 11pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 56 degrees at 3am. 17 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 52 at 5am. South wind 10 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 24 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. In 2016, it got down to 35 degrees under partly clear skies. The record low of 22 occurred back in 1981.

Waning Gibbous Moon tonight with 69% illuminated. The moon will rise around 10:05 pm. The Last Quarter Moon is on Wednesday night with chance of rain expected. The Full “Flower” Moon is on Wednesday, May 10th. The sun will rise at 6:12 am with the first light at 5:42 am, which is one minute and 37 seconds earlier than yesterday. Tonight will have 10 hours and 32 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 45 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have a chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 3pm. Partly sunny, with a high of 81 degrees at 4pm. 22 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 53 at 7am. Southwest wind 11 to 17 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. A year ago, we had partly sunny skies and a high of 66 degrees. The record high of 91 was set in 2012. 5.3 inches of snow fell back in 1983.

While it will be hot and relatively dry tomorrow, we got a reasonably good soaking rain this afternoon when I went up to Thatcher Park to top off my new accessory battery and get out for a walk. Probably would have been good fishing had I hit up a trout steam but I kind of wanted to stretch my legs. Very muddy though at Thatcher Park, at least hiking in the fields off of Ryan Road. Not a big wash out but after an hour and a half of hiking I was quite wet. 

Getting ready for camping. Almost got the truck wired up. Bought a new Everstart Deep Cycle Marine battery, and it should hopefully last a long time now that all of the attached load is hooked to the low voltage disconnect that drops the load below 12.1 volts. Not a real fancy battery and that Group 24 size is small but I don’t have a lot of room under the hood of my truck.  The new truck cap switches are installed although most of the lights aren’t hooked up yet as it got dark out this evening. The new switches are great, easy to use and reliable big buttons. I have the dimmer hooked up and three of the six switches will be controlled by the dimmer. The dimmer works fairly good although a lowest settings are a bit hard to reach and seem to have a somewhat noticeable flicker. All of the white LEDs will be on the dimmer. One dimmer controlled switch is intentionally unused for future expansion. With the 8 gage wire, I have the capacity to run 60 amps or 720 watts of load in the truck cap but I imagine that’s overkill but I wanted to use large enough wire for all future needs. I do plan to add a 12 volt fan this summer to keep cool in the hot weather. I have a total of four USB charging ports now in the truck cap plus two cigarette style outlets. I should be pretty set for lighting and power in the cap at camp. With the under voltage protection with the battery, I expect a long life for the battery. 

Got to the transfer station, cleaned out my refrigerator and now my truck is free of bottles and cans so tomorrow I can put the camping gear back in it. Trash cans are empty so I won’t have to go anytime soon especially if I burn the papers starting fires at camp. It will be nice to be out camping again. I’m not sure how great the weather will be next week for my trip but I’ll take an abbreviated trip. Also got my haircut today. I like shorter hair when camping as it doesn’t get so dirty. 

My hands are so sore and cracked. It’s not just from the cuts. I’ve been using lotion with limited luck. I don’t know what to say. I guess my skin has just gotten dried out but I’m sure stripping and cutting all that wire hasn’t helped. Oh well. 

In four weeks on May 13 the sun will be setting at 8:09 pm, which is 31 minutes and 16 seconds later then tonight. In 2016 on that day, we had fog, rain and temperatures between 64 and 52 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 69 and 46 degrees. The record high of 86 degrees was set back in 2004.

Looking ahead, Earth Day is Next Saturday. Assuming that the weather cooperates that will be my last night camping.