Good morning! It’s a Monday once  again with three weeks to Christmas. Fog and temperatures around freezing. The ground is warm enough that there is no ice except on the grass and car roofs. Calm wind. 

All I can say is that that the investigation into the human carcass found behind Hoffmans Car Wash isn’t trying up traffic and is keeping the state game wardens and Bethlehem cops busy. So it’s a good time to speed in your car and for poachers to shoot  deer over bait. I figure they called in the game wardens in from all over Region 4, because the DEC frowns upon illegal dumping because it’s cuts into the profits of the Rapp Road landfill and the $10 a ton the city pays into the Pine Bush Restoration fund. Applied Ecological Services from Wisconsin expects to be paid for their work. I’ll get to work on time, ultimately that is all that is really matters. 

Today will be mostly sunny, with a high of 48 degrees at 3pm. Eight degrees above normal. Light southeast wind becoming south 5 to 9 mph in the afternoon. A year ago, we had cloudy skies, clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 36 degrees. The record high of 63 was set in 1998. 6 inches of snow fell back in 1901. Not a very impressive snow record. 

The sun will set at 4:22 pm with dusk around 4:53 pm, which is 11 seconds earlier than yesterday. Pretty close to the earliest sunset of year. Later sunsets come Sunday.  At sunset, look for partly cloudy conditions and 46 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 9 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 12 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 11 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a slight chance of showers after 4am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 39 degrees at 12am. 14 degrees above normal. South wind 9 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 31 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2016, we had partly cloudy skies with more clouds in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 26 degrees. The record low of 2 occurred back in 1989.

A little congested this morning, and I had trouble getting up and going, so I’m taking the local in this morning. I just have a bad case of the Mondays. I do need to get into office relatively early as I have to check my news clips before going to ethics training. It’s so far from the Adirondack wilderness where I was yesterday. I wonder if the weather will be nice enough to get our hiking or camping later in the month. Depends on how cold and snowy it is. I know they are talking about colder and snowier weather for December. 

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Christmas when the sun will be setting at 4:27 pm with dusk at 4:59 pm. On that day in 2016, we had drizzle, mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 43 and 21 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 66 back in 1889.