December 21, 2022 Morning

Good morning! Mostly sunny and 16 degrees at the Rensselaerville State Forest. ☀ Calm wind. Without the wind it feels much warmer. It’s actually a beautiful day with the sun. There are 15 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 6 pm. 🌡️

While last night was a bit cold with the wind, 💨 today is absolutely beautiful, ☀ a good day to get away for two nights and do some skiing 🎿 on the snowmobile trails when most people are at work. I’m off this week but with the cold weather and the rain and snow coming I figure head home Thursday. Reading the news 📰 I picked a good week to be off, though in my current position I don’t have to deal with so much of that silliness.

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high around the freezing point at 2pm. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around January 15th. Light southwest wind. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. The high last year was 42 degrees. The record high of 62 was set in 2018. 6.6 inches of snow fell back in 2008.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:56 am with sun having an altitude of 24.1° from the due south horizon (-46.9° 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 3:42 pm with the sun in the southwest (230°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (238°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:27 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 25 seconds with dusk around 4:58 pm, which is 28 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:35 pm. At sunset, look for mostly sunny skies 🌃 and temperatures around 30 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 9 hours and 6 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 3 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 16 degrees at 9pm. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around January 11th. Maximum wind chill around 12 at 11pm; West wind around 6 mph becoming east in the evening. In 2021, we had partly cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 28 degrees. The record low of -8 occurred back in 1955.

Cold for Christmas Weekend. ☀ ❄ Christmas Eve, partly sunny, with a high near 14. Sunday, for Christmas going to warm up to 17 degrees with lots of sun. But not a white Christmas 🤶 after Friday’s rain unless you count the salt on the roads. Typical average high for the weekend is 36 degrees.

As we head into winter the days start getting longer, and by next Wednesday we have the 4:30 PM Sunset 🌆 when the sun will be with dusk at 5:02 pm. On that day in 2021, we had mostly cloudy skies with freezing rain showers and temperatures between 46 and 31 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 35 degrees. We hit a record high of 61 back in 1982.