Good morning! Happy Thursday. Two weeks to Latest Sunrise of the Winter 🌄️. Tomorrow is the first day of winter. Mostly sunny and 33 degrees in Delmar. Calm wind. Rather hazy though in the city. Fairly pleasant morning, but I’m more then a bit drowsy.💤

A nice morning but I had trouble getting going this morning, ☀ as I had too many cups of coffee at the Pine Bush dinner and that effected my sleep. ☕ Not only did I drink coffee with dinner, I drank more when I started to choke on one of the cookies during the dinner. Kind of a busy day yesterday but after it all I did make it to the Pine Bush dinner. 🌲Taking the local to work. 🚌

The sun will set at 4:24 pm with dusk around 4:56 pm, which is 28 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ and temperatures around 40 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 6 mph.

Today will have increasing clouds ☁, with a high of 41 degrees at 1pm. Seven degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 3rd. South wind 3 to 6 mph. A year ago, we had with more clouds in the afternoon. The high last year was 40 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1957. 8.4 inches of snow fell back in 1975.❄

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous Moon 🌔 with 97% illuminated with the moon rising at 3:03 pm. The moon will set at 5:51 am. December’s Cold Moon 🌕 will be tomorrow. The sun will rise at 7:21 am with the first light at 6:49 am, which is 32 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 14 hours and 57 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 seconds over last night.

Tonight will rain, mainly after 9pm. The rain could be heavy at times. 🌧 Low of 39 degrees at 6pm. 20 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 18th. South wind around 6 mph becoming calm. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible. Going to be a wet and warm night into the day tomorrow. In 2017, we had light snow in the evening. It got down to 21 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1942.

I continue to work on writing the code ⌨ for my niece’s flashing star, 💫 right now I’ve come up with 16 different color patterns. It’s a little hard to think of additional ones, although I’m sure there is more ramps and flashing patterns I could come up with. I want to try put as much in as possible in the code, as it would make more interesting, but after a while coming up with new patterns is hard.

The Pine Bush dinner was interesting but I’m not sure if I agree with having speakers pushing commercial products that they’re making money off of. 💰Geothermal is interesting and I guess there are many benefits to solar energy although I have my doubts about those large industrial solar facilities. I think there is a lot of questions that need to be asked about developing large tracks of farm land and forest,🎋 covering them with panels made out of hazardous materials that will pose risks for generations to come especially if they aren’t properly hauled off to landfills at the end of their lives. ⬛ Cow manure rots, farm fields revert to the woods by themselves without government intervening. But I guess I’m a minority voice, to be grouped in with the fossil fuel proponents just for asking questions of the government bureaucrats.

I will probably go out hiking somewhere on Sunday, maybe not too far away, 🚶 then out to the folks house for Christmas Eve. It looks like virtually all of the snow except for the highest locations of the Adirondacks will be gone after the heavy rains of Friday into Saturday. ☔ With the rain on Saturday, I will finish up working on my various Christmas gifts that I’ve been working on building. I got a bunch of perf and strip board in the mail the other day, for building further products.🔬 Always a good thing on cold winter nights, except for the drafts blowing smoke from the flux burning off into my face.

For the New Years Eve long weekend, I am considering going camping up in the Adirondacks or maybe Brookfield. 🏕 With the snow gone all over locally, and only a little left in the Adirondacks, it might be nice to get away. I still have camp food stored away, the high calorie stuff I don’t like to eat at home and plenty of propane for at least a few nights camping, although if I do a full three nights, I might get the tank to be filled to be safe rather then sorry. A nice fire is always good, and if we have some sunny weather, some hunting and hiking would be a lot of fun. I kind of like Brookfield because those campsites you can drive up into, as if I go there, it will be in snow-free weather. Plus good cellphone reception which can make the long nights pass quicker.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until Latest Sunrise of the Winter 🌄️ when the sun will be setting at 4:34 pm with dusk at 5:06 pm. On that day in 2018, we had partly sunny and temperatures between 22 and 7 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 61 back in 1913.