Good morning! Happy Bacon Day 🥓! Who is opposed to bacon, besides religious zealots? Not mention all those other delicious things that pigs produce and the rich farm dirt. 🐷 Read about that a lot in Foxfire Books. 📔 Two weeks to Make Your Dream Come True Day 🏡. What can I say, Cam Edwards and his podcast is a bad influence.

Not real nice morning. Cloudy and 20 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ Calm wind. Things will start to thaw out at around 2 pm. 🌡️

Feeling a lot better today, 😃 I think the knock off NightQuil and DayQuil helped a lot. 🤒I usually do get a bad cold this time of year, although somehow I thought I would be immune this year with social distancing, but who knows. My throat isn’t as sore as it was, and while my nose is a bit stuffy 👃 I am feeling a lot better and plan to work on getting packed for the Adirondacks later this evening. Going to head up early in the morning, so I can have time to dig out a parking spot and campsite.☃ I might just stay the night or maybe for the weekend, still watching the forecast.

That said, I skipped my morning and evening walks. 🚶 I know bad. But I’m thinking about a lunch time walk. ☕ No reason not to, I don’t expect a busy day the day before the long weekend. My job now has an hour lunch break, so I should take it (watches as email 📧 comes in a 1:00 PM 🕐 as I go to lunch). 🍳 I had a nice breakfast of eggs and ham, which was really good with the coffee. It’s sad how addicted I am coffee but it is a good stimulus for getting going in the morning. 💵 Maybe not as good as a free $2,000 check from the government, but I’ll take it.

Today will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a high of 35 degrees at 4pm. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 19th. Light south wind increasing to 10 to 15 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had patches of fog in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 39 degrees. The record high of 53 was set in 1984. 10.9 inches of snow fell back in 2000.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:59 am with sun having an altitude of 24.3° from the due south horizon (-46.6° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.3 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:46 pm with the sun in the southwest (231°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (239°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:32 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 24 seconds with dusk around 5:03 pm, which is 48 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waning Gibbous 🌖 Moon in the east-northeast (57°) at an altitude of 2° from the horizon, 242,450 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:39 pm. At sunset, look for partly cloudy skies 🌃 and temperatures around 34 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 15 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 6 minutes of daytime, an increase of 39 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of rain showers and sleet before 11pm, then a chance of rain and snow showers between 11pm and midnight, then rain showers likely after midnight. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 32 degrees at 6pm. 16 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around November 16th. South wind 7 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Little or no snow and sleet accumulation expected. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 34 degrees. The record low of -17 occurred back in 1917.

Kind of a mixed bag for the weekend. 😞 New Years day. Mostly sunny, with a high near 32. Calm wind becoming southeast around 5 mph in the afternoon.  Saturday, freezing rain and sleet before 10am, then rain likely between 10am and 4pm, then a chance of rain and snow showers after 4pm. High near 39. Chance of precipitation is 80%. Sunday, a chance of snow before 1pm, then a chance of rain and snow. Partly sunny, with a high near 36. Chance of precipitation is 50%. Typical average high for the weekend is 31 degrees.

So I am continuing to watch the weather, 💭 but I’m thinking of heading up to the Adirondacks at least for New Years Eve and Day. Not sure if I want to deal with freezing rain though, but I can monitor the weather and decide to come back on New Years Day if necessary. I just don’t want to deal with a tent covered with ice or the potential for snapping tree branches. That said, it does look like Sunday it will be warm enough that the roads will be fine, and there isn’t going to be a ton of snow, to make shoveling out to the road difficult (I’m going to park near the road).

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until Make Your Dream Come True Day 🏡 when the sun will be setting at 4:45 pm with dusk at 5:16 pm. The longer days will be nice. On that day in 2020, we had mostly cloudy skies, it was mild with a few rain showers and temperatures between 40 and 29 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 30 degrees. We hit a record high of 71 back in 1932.