Good morning! Happy Bill of Rights Day 📜! While the constitution is just a sheet of paper it’s important we elect good people to enforce it. ⚖ Next Tuesday the Days are Getting Longer ☀️. Looking forward to that. Already we are starting to get a little more daylight in the evening although that’s offset by super dark mornings that have been particularly cloudy lately.

Mostly sunny and 27 degrees in Delmar, NY. Breezy, ️16 mph breeze from the northwest 🌬 . The current wind chill is 15. 🌅 Things will start to thaw out at Sunday around 11 am. 🌡️

Even with the relatively low sun angle, ☀ the bright sun and blue skies help a lot. Out for my morning walk 🚶🏻 not any snow or ice to deal with. It looks like the impending snow storm 🌨 is going to stay south of us for the most part, just cloudy and cold for us here. And certainly not a ton of snow in the Adirondacks which is what I really care about for a Christmas weekend camping trip. 🎄

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 31 degrees at 2pm. Five degrees below normal, colder than a typical winter day. Northwest wind 15 to 17 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. But I don’t care, the cold is keeping the snow south of us it seems. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 44 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 2015. 8.2 inches of snow fell back in 1968.❄

I have a few supplies I want to pick up today 🏪 and then I will go down to the library to work. 💻 I also have a Zoom with a community group I’m involved in, I plan to listen to that in the background. The store stock tool says that Walmart has headphones in stock again so I’m hoping to pick them up. 🎧 Kind of a cold day but once my truck is warmed up with the sun I should be fine ☀ working from the parking lot. Tomorrow with the snow 🌨 and probably mostly clouds, I’ll work from home. If I end up burning up too much data that’s fine, I need to reup my plan come next Wednesday and if I loose a day off my year long plan then so be it. I may need the extra bandwidth for work next week at any rate. 📶

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:52 am with sun having an altitude of 24.1° from the due south horizon (-46.7° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.4 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:38 pm with the sun in the southwest (231°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (239°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:24 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 24 seconds with dusk around 4:54 pm, which is 15 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the southwest (230°) at an altitude of 5° from the horizon, 232,750 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:31 pm. At sunset, look for clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 29 degrees. The wind chill around sunset will be 18. ☃️ There will be a northwest breeze at 15 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 4 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 28 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌃, with a low of 12 degrees at 5am. Nine degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 4 at 5am; Northwest wind 5 to 10 mph. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 25 degrees. The record low of -11 occurred back in 1917.

I turned on my little portable electric heater ♨ before bed for a little while last night. I think it’s cheaper than turning up the heat downstairs. Last month I only paid 13.1 cents for each extra kilowatt hour I consumed and if I’m only using it for a few minutes here and there it’s cheaper than turning the main heat up. So far in the week I’ve had it I’ve only used it fit a few hours. I’m thinking about also getting a heating pad as an inexpensive way to stay warm this winter. I’m not thrilled about being home all winter and having the heat on all day even if it’s on low. My bill was $72 last month and it remains elevated through the winter.

On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed under the weight of rush-hour traffic, resulting in the deaths of 46 people. Two of the victims were never found. 🌉 The Silver Bridge was an eyebar-chain suspension bridge built in 1928 and named for the color of its aluminum paint. The bridge carried U.S. Route 35 over the Ohio River, connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio. Investigation of the wreckage pointed to the cause of the collapse being the failure of a single eyebar in a suspension chain, due to a small defect 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) deep. Analysis showed that the bridge was carrying much heavier loads than it had originally been designed for and had been poorly maintained. The collapsed bridge was replaced by the Silver Memorial Bridge, which was completed in 1969.

Also, today in 2000, was an the end of an era at the infamous Chernobyl Power Plant. Reactor No. 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and the power plant is now within a large restricted area known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. ☢ Both the zone and the former power plant are administered by the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management. The three remaining reactors remained operational after the accident; all three were eventually shut down by 2000, and the plant remains in the process of decommissioning. 🤯 Nuclear clean-up is scheduled for completion in 2065.

Saturday looks the sunniest but coldest for the, . 😕 Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 32. Sunday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 36. Typical average high for the weekend is 35 degrees.

As previously noted, next Tuesday the days are getting longer ☀️ when the sun will be setting at 4:25 pm with dusk at 4:57 pm. On that day in 2019, we had sunny and temperatures between 34 and 10 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 34 degrees. We hit a record high of 60 back in 1990.