One week from now I’ll be heading out to work for a while before leaving for Moose River Plains for the long weekend. I thought about taking today off from work but I have some stuff to do at work today and with the long weekend next weekend I figured I better not put it off. Looking forward to that. The high humidity, cloudy skies and predicted rain and thunderstorms were other reasons to come in the office today.

Seventy-five degrees now under cloudy skies on our way up to 85 with thunderstorms later. The radar shows significant rain in Western NY, we may get it a lot of it later. Nicer, lower humidity weather for Saturday but watch out for thunderstorms later. Same is true for Sunday, even to a greater extent. With the rain coming, I brought my flag in.

The sun will set at 8:37 pm with dusk around 9:12 pm, which is 7 seconds later than yesterday.  Today is the latest sunset of the year. Tomorrow, the sunset is a few seconds earlier (I know what your thinking — who cares?). At sunset, look for thunderstorms with the mercury around 80 degrees. The dew point will be 70 degrees. There will be a south-southwest breeze at 10 mph. Today will have 15 hours and 18 minutes of daytime, an increase of 11 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have showers and thunderstorms likely before 4am, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 4am. Some of the storms could produce heavy rain. Cloudy, with a low of 69 degrees at 5am. 10 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 70 at 7pm. Southwest wind 7 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. In 2016, it got down to 53 degrees with mostly sunny skies. The record low of 44 occurred back in 1932.

This weekend for me it’s out to Schoharie County, at least come Saturday morning. Should be a nice weekend. Been looking for spending some quality time at the pool. Sure, I could go to the Bethlehem Town Park Pool — I would just need to get a town permit and pay $4.50 to use it — but honestly, I really like the trip out to Schoharie County, along with camping, hiking, fishing, and all those fresh goodies at the farm market. Even the trip through Gilboa is beautiful drive. Even though it ends up costing more when you figure the drive, it on the whole is much better then the town pool.

Looking forward to trying out the camp oven for breakfast on Sunday morning. Going to start simple with grands biscuits, jelly and coffee for breakfast on Sunday. That way I can get a quick start breaking camp, and get out so I can maybe go for a short hike, hit up the farm markets, fish, and then swim for a while at Mine Kill before I have to head out to my parents house for Sunday dinner. Bohringers Fruit Farm is open from 9 AM to 6 PM daily.

I don’t expect much of a big deal to pack for camping, as it’s just one night and now I keep most of my pans in the the plastic cabinet. I do need to get the propane lantern, stove, and cooler out of the attic and pack a change of clothes — maybe two in case things get wet in a thunderstorm. And lots of sunscreen, especially if I am planning on spending hours in the sun next to the pool.

Somebody — honestly a conservative christian nut — wrote me about how offended he was about by gay pride flag. My reaction — I don’t care. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. I actually like the flag because it’s very colorful, and I like bright colors. But in response I went out and bought a Molon Labe flag to add to my collection.  Because I felt I needed more balance for my camp flag collection, and I’m a big proponent of gun rights. I figured that with my Gadsen will balance out that rainbow and earth flag. Balance is important these days.

Looking ahead, there are 3 weeks until National Nude Day when the sun will be setting at 8:31 pm with dusk at 9:05 pm. So you’ll have to wait a while to go skinny dipping on that day. On that day in 2016, we had thunderstorms in the afternoon, but otherwise partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 87 and 73 degrees. A bit warm but typical for summer. Normally that time of year, we look for a high temperature is 83 degrees. We hit a record high of 99 back in 1995.