Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Three weeks to August 1st. I’m not sure I’m ready to be thinking about July coming to an end but it will be over before you know it. Mostly cloudy and 74 degrees in City of Albany. There is a south-southwest breeze at 8 mph. The dew point is 66 degrees. The skies will clear around 7 pm.

Today will have a chance of showers, with thunderstorms also possible after noon. Mostly cloudy, with a high of 86 degrees at 3pm. Four degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 69 at 4pm. Hazy, hot and humid.  Southwest wind 6 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 79 degrees. The record high of 98 was set in 1936.

The sun will set at 8:33 pm with dusk around 9:07 pm, which is 32 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly cloudy conditions and 80 degrees. The dew point will be 69 degrees. So muggy even the muggers will be complaining. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 15 hours and 4 minutes Lof daytime, an increase of one minute and 19 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly before 11pm. Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low of 66 degrees at 5am. Four degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 69 at 6pm. Light and variable wind. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. In 2016, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 54 degrees. The record low of 44 occurred back in 1978.

On this day in 1962, live television was transmitted for the first time across the Atlantic Ocean. Seems odd nowadays, when so much commerence is global and we can access a server next door as quickly as in France.

The weekend forecast has improved once again, and I’m still leaning towards going up to White House, swimming in Wells or Speculator, and paddling the flat water of Sacandaga River north of Auger Falls. I haven’t camped at White House in a long time and as far as I know it’s still open despite the wilderness advocates insisting it be closed. I’ll have to make sure to hang up extra lights and flags, and eat burgers on Styrofoam to celebrate camping in the wilderness. Because I burn my garbage, I know the Styrofoam won’t be sitting in The landfill for a million years. I love fire and burning shit.

A week from Saturday I will be out in the Finger Lakes on my summer vacation. I’m toying with the idea of leaving on Friday and driving out to Madison County and from there heading down to the Finger Lakes early Saturday so I can get camp set up and hit the Watkins Glen pool until seven. Need to work on my tan more.

Finally got to bed early last night. It was a nice evening sleeping although by morning it was humid so I was glad I left the Dan running on low even if it is a bit power hungry. I hate wasting kilowatts or even watts as I eventually plan to live off the grid. 

I got my new phone but I’m unwilling to start using it before I get the case and screen protector. It should work well but I noticed that the FM radio doesn’t work through the Bluetooth connection but that’s fine because I can just use a wired connection for that purpose. All phones require something to be plugged in the headphone port to use as an antenna at any rate. I also ordered an inexpensive USB OTG Cable so I can connect a keyboard or a flash drive to the phone while camping to upload photos or for blogging. I think it cost only $2. Very simple device. 

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until August 1st when the sun will be setting at 8:14 pm with dusk at 8:46 pm. On that day in 2016, we had rain, drizzle, patches of fog, mist, cloudy skies and temperatures between 74 and 67 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 82 degrees. We hit a record high of 101 back in 1933.