Negative two or for those who don’t like being so negative roughly 245 degrees Kelvin with lots of sun this morning. Later on, looking at the mercury reaching 265 Kelvin or maybe 17 degrees with lots of sun. Doesn’t seem that cold when you look at the temperature in Kelvin. Cooler on Thursday with snow flurries and continued cold for the weekend. Certainly we can have even colder weather but it’s still the bleakness of winter.

It was chilly in the apartment when I first awoke but after turning on the extra heaterr and cooking up breakfast things quickly warmed up. But I still procrastinated and barely made the earlier local downtown. But at least I didn’t have to stand out in the cold for very long, and I made it downtown promptly. A lot of haze downtown, especially in the Mohawk Valley which looks like a dirty smog-infested haze from the pollution from all the oil and gas burners across the region, combined with the bright sun and a temperature inversion.

The sun will set at 4:29 pm with dusk around 5:01 pm, which is 43 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly sunny conditions and 16 degrees. The wind chill around sunset will be 4. There will be a northwest breeze at 10 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 4 minutes of daytime, an increase of 27 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 2 degrees at 5am. Cold, some 15 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -19 at 5am; Northwest wind 9 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. Brr. Hopefully in the more protected parts of Delmar it won’t be that cold, especially when I walk down to the library later. In 2016, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 29 degrees. The record low of -14 occurred back in 1951.

Going to definitely be cold for the next few days. That really sucks for waiting for the bus home, with the blowing winds in front of the building, and maybe walking down to the library. Heating bills will be more, but hopefully that will be far enough off that by then I will have a few paychecks in by then. And sometimes January has thaws and warms up, as shown previously on this blog. I don’t have any plans although this weekend I will need to go to the store and buy some more groceries. I might also do the rail trail once again, maybe down to the Normans Kill Gorge for a change. I did really enjoy that one section heading out to Voorheesville too.

Looking ahead to the New Year, next Wednesday is State of the State Day when the sun will be setting at 4:35 pm with dusk at 5:06 pm. On that day in 2017, we had rain, drizzle, freezing drizzle, mist, cloudy skies and temperatures between 37 and 31 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 61 back in 1913.