Good evening. Currently clear and 18 degrees in Delmar. A bit chilly but it’s January, normally the coldest part of the year. Beautiful stars on this very clear evening. All day has been quite clear and nice at least for scenic views if you don’t mind the cold.

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low around 14. West wind around 6 mph becoming light and variable after midnight. Waxing crescent moon has already set. Around 9 PM that very slender moon was very pretty as it was setting.

Tomorrow’s sunrise will be at 7:23 am with first light at 6:52 am, which is one minute and 21 seconds earlier then today.

Been studying visibility analysis and how to make good maps from the peaks of mountains that shade out features not visible from the firetower or overlook. I’m kind of figuring out the QGIS visibility plug-in but it’s still new to me. As visibility / peak maps are a much larger scale then hiking and camping maps, like I usually make up, they require a lot less detail and things scaled differently which is a totally different effort from the ground up. Eventually I’ll get a template I like. I started working on a Stillwater Firetower map but switched to Wakely Mountain as I know the area better and are able to better gauge the accuracy of the visibility maps as I learn the settings. The first maps may be posted by this weekend if I can make a satisfactory product.

Other than that, I walked down to the library for a bit and then went for my evening walk. Nothing too exciting. Had fish sticks and sweet potato fries and veggies for dinner and a few beers. All and all a decent Monday. Tomorrow evening I get paid which is nice, as I can retire some credit card debt from the rather costly past month. Oh, well. You got to live and that costs money.

I hope you had a good day. Sleep well!

Good morning! Monday’s come back around again. Snow flurries  currently coming down and 25 degrees in Delmar. The snow flurries make the gray and dark skies seem less depressing, and to the north there is some sun. Normans Kill is raging after yesterday’s rain.

Today will have a slight chance of snow showers before 11am. Partly sunny, with a high near 29. West wind 14 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20% .Sunset will be at 4:42 pm with twilight at 5:14 pm which is one minute and 6 seconds later then yesterday.

There are 7 days until Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Depending on which model you look at we may have a snowstorm that day. Regardless, the weekend looks frigid but that’s to be expected this time of year. It’s winter after all.

This day in 1960, Henry Lee Lucas, once known as America’s most prolific serial killer, commits his first known murder. Some cheery history news to start out your Monday. At least it shows that crazy murders aren’t a new thing in America. Kind of a dark way to start the this day in history part of the blog, and indeed it wasn’t intentional. I had written the feature last week but today was when it came live on the server. Also, I brought back the countdowns and automated weather templates to save some cutting and pasting and switching between apps on my phone.

Spilled my dinner I packed all over the bag that contains, leaking pasta sauce a little over everywhere, including one overcoat. I’ll clean it off when I get to work and will have to drop it off at the dry cleaner on Thursday. So be it. I will have to be careful carrying it the rest of the way into work. I’ll clean the mess up at work.

Other than that, it’s a Monday. I caught the bus on time, so I can’t complain that much. Have a great Monday and have better luck then me.