Good afternoon! It’s the Saturday before Easter. 🐰 Sunny and 45 degrees at the Five Rivers Environmental Education Center. 🌞 There is a northwest breeze at 10 mph. 🍃. Temperatures will drop below freezing tonight. ☃️

I decided today should be like many Saturdays and just go for a nature walk at Five Rivers. 🐦 On this sunny but cold day there is a lot of nature out and about, birds, ducks 🦆 and I saw a muskrat and a ground hog behind the Radley barn. I thought about driving somewhere but with gas prices these days, ⛽ it’s better to stay home. 🏡

Cold enough last night 🌃 I had to put the heat on and sat by the electric space heater this morning. I’m ready to stop paying for heat especially as my door 🚪 in my apartment keeps getting more drafty as the sill rots away. I’m looking forward to being able to sleep 😴 with the windows open 🔳 as I sleep much better.

Been working on getting the updated Save the Pine Bush Website up and running. 🦋 While the code has been done for a while now, inevitably bugs 🐞 crop up after you go live. Plus I needed to set up the home page and sidebar which was out of date and couldn’t be automatically converted over. Check it out at savethepinebush.org. It’s mobile friendly and accessible. 📱

This afternoon will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 48 degrees at 3pm. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 25th. Northwest wind around 10 mph. A year ago, we had light rain in the morning, which became light drizzle by afternoon. Breeze makes it feel cold. The high last year was 51 degrees. The record high of 79 was set in 1981. 11 inches of snow fell back in 1891.❄

I thought about going north this weekend ⛺ but I had to work on Good Friday ✝️ and everything is just in flux these days with work and working from camp is fine but not really that much fun. Work just eats up the daylight hours which you spend watching the meter on the solar panel. 🌞 And with that wind, especially up north it would be too cold to lay in the hammock even in the sun.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:59 pm with sun having an altitude of 52.8° from the due south horizon (-18° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 4.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:47 pm with the sun in the west (272°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (278°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:24 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 55 seconds with dusk around 7:52 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:27 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 44 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 12 hours and 50 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 51 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 26 degrees at 5am. Seven degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 18th. Light and variable wind. In 2020, we had light drizzle in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 46 degrees. The record low of 14 occurred back in 1954.

As previously noted, next Saturday is 8 PM Dusk 🌆 when the sun will be setting at 7:31 pm. On that day in 2020, we had partly sunny, snow showers and temperatures between 48 and 37 degrees. Kind of a cold day both today and last year. It happens in April. Typically, the high temperature is 56 degrees. We hit a record high of 86 back in 1922.