Good morning! Happy Thursday. Two weeks to State Fair Opens. Partly sunny with the fog quickly burning off and 68 degrees in Albany. Calm wind. The dew point is 61 degrees. Warming up fast. The bus at the Park and Ride didn’t have the air conditioning on but once we got moving, the open windows quickly cooled things down.

Today will have isolated showers and thunderstorms after 2pm. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high of 85 degrees at 3pm. Four degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 62 at 10am. Going to be a fairly nice day, not too humid but fairly warm. Calm wind becoming southwest around 6 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had light rain in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. It was very sticky. I remember that day, I was glad I was stuck in the air conditioned office until seven. It wasn’t pleasant — it felt like you stepped out into a wet mop when you went outside. The high last year was 84 degrees. The record high of 96 was set in 1949.

The sun will set at 8:02 pm with dusk around 8:33 pm, which is one minute and 23 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly cloudy conditions and 75 degrees. The dew point will be 62 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 14 hours and 5 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 27 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 63 degrees at 4am. Two degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 62 at 8pm. Light south wind. In 2016, we had mostly cloudy skies. It remained very sticky. It got down to 72 degrees. That was a night I spent next to the fan. The record low of 46 occurred back in 1941.

This weekend doesn’t still look that great despite yesterday’s optimism. That’s fine. I ordered and received a new kayak paddle but it was too short for my big kayak so I need to return it this weekend and hopefully exchange it for a larger size. I really want to be able to get  out in the kayak and do some fishing before the end of summer. I am keeping an eye on the following weekend because if it turns out nice, I’ll have to think seriously about a mini vacation redo. Right now, looking 10 days out, next weekend looks just about perfect in the Finger Lakes. It would be fun to take some nights camping, and watch the solar eclipse.

Today is the big rally today with Bill McKibbean and James Cromwell downtown. People talk a lot about Mr. Cromwell, but I have no idea who he is except some obscure movie star, that refused to pay a fine so he spent six day in the county lock-up, at large expense to county government. I guess they are protesting that new natural gas plant downstate. While I don’t have much of an opinion on that — besides arguing that natural gas is cheaper and less polluting then nuclear — I think it would be cool to see Bill McKibbean. He was too expensive to get to come to our college for a lecture, despite living just up the road in the Adirondacks, at least part of the year. I am going to go to check it for a short while during my lunch break.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until State Fair Opens when the sun will be setting at 7:41 pm with dusk at 8:11 pm. On that day in 2016, we had patches of fog, partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 85 and 57 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 79 degrees. We hit a record high of 95 back in 1947.