February 6, 2020 Night

Good evening! Rain and 33 degrees in Delmar, NY. β˜” Calm wind.There is a inch of snow on the ground. β˜ƒ ️Temperatures will drop below freezing at tomorrow around 3 pm. β˜ƒοΈ

It’s above freezing by a little bit in Albany 💦 so the roads are just wet and salty. I cleaned off my truck of the inch of snow and ice as I think it’s going to turn to snow tomorrow followed by a hard freeze Saturday and I didn’t want things to freeze up on my truck. Things were a little icy on the truck but the warmer temperatures this evening made for relatively easy scraping.

The primary business of the evening was going to the Rick Sieves film showing 🎥 at the library than I came home rode the exercise bike 🚲 for a bit and read 📖 mote of the Almost President book. My neighbor works night shift tonight so no concerns with bothering him with the noise of the bike. Time for bed soon with lights out.

Tonight will rain likely before 1am, then showers likely after 1am. Cloudy 🌧, with a low of 32 degrees at 9pm. 16 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 1st. Northeast wind 3 to 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. In 2019, we had light rain in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 36 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1995.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous 🌖 Moon with 93% illuminated. At 9 PM, the moon was in the southeast (137Β°) at an altitude of 66Β° from the horizon, some 234,266 miles away from where you are looking up from the earth. 🚀 At the state speed limit of 55 mph, you’ll make it there by August 2nd. Buckle up for safety! 💺 The Snow ❄ Moon is on Sunday, February 9. The darkest hour is at 12:10 am, followed by dawn at 6:36 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:06 am in the east-southeast (111Β°) and last for 3 minutes and 7 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 10 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 7:46 am with sun in the east-southeast (118Β°). Tonight will have 13 hours and 48 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 31 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will rain before 2pm, then rain and snow between 2pm and 3pm, then snow likely after 3pm. 🌦 High of 36 degrees at 10am. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 19th. Breezy, with a light and variable wind becoming northwest 17 to 22 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 37 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. I think tomorrow’s commute home could be very icy and a slog but at least I don’t have to drive in it and can just play on my phone 📱. I might take the local into work tomorrow if it’s raining hard in the morning. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, which became light freezing rain by afternoon. The high last year was 47 degrees. The record high of 48 was set in 2005. 12.4 inches of snow fell back in 1983.❄

I am pretty sure I can do some neat things with the automatic bus locator feed I posted earlier. 🚍 While I doubt I’ll mess too much with Google maps – although I certainly could, I do think that I could do a lot with it client side Javascript and making a simple but fast index of the location of all the buses on a route for checking on one’s phones and maybe also tracking the electric buses. Looks like the weekend forecast continues to slide downhill – I could still go to that Adirondack Outdoors show but at this point I don’t know for sure. 🎣 It’s a long drive for a relatively small show. I also want to do some soldering projects and practice especially once I get hat flux pen.

In four weeks on March 5 the sun will be setting in the west (263Β°) at 5:50 pm,🌄 which is 35 minutes and 38 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had cold, mostly sunny and temperatures between 28 and 7 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 40 and 22 degrees. The record high of 71 degrees was set back in 1964.

Looking ahead, 5:30 PM Sunset 🌆 is in 2 weeks and Flower Moon 🌕 is in 13 weeks.

🇺🇸🦅Only 15 weeks remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

Dip in Road

I just got done watching Rick Sieves The Rise of Facism in Europe at the Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace

I just got done watching Rick Sieves The Rise of Facism in Europe at the Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace. ✌

Its a reminder that it can happen here. Or anywhere. We pretend we are better than fascism and we would never let a strong man rule our country. But is that really true or just a lie we tell ourselves? Would we behave differently than the Germans or the Italians during the Great Depression? Power can often is abused by people who think they have God on their side as power often is violent and oppressive. People should be skeptical of power both of their own political persuasion and that of others. People should welcome the dysfunction of democracy and the virtues of taking it slow. Fascism can come to America and its just as likely to be a left wing as a right wing thing. 

I noticed that CDTA’s vehicle locator system has a public facing feed at the Internet that one could pull to get the locations of all the buses currently on the road

I noticed that CDTA’s vehicle locator system has a public facing feed at the Internet that one could pull to get the locations of all the buses currently on the road.

https://www.cdta.org/realtime/buses.json?[randomStringLikeTimeToForceBrowserRefresh]

This might be useful for a mapping application (as there are coordinates for each bus in feed, along with direction of the bus) or maybe just a straight-forward text interface for using on mobile apps. I am undecided if I will make something public-facing or just for my ease and convenience. I’ll have to think more about it.

I was really hoping to get out of town this weekend, but once again the winter weather has defeated me

I was really hoping to get out of town this weekend, but once again the winter weather has defeated me. 🌨

It looks like based on the forecast that Brookfield is getting a half inch of ice today and 7 1/2 inches of snow tomorrow, and it will have a low of negative 2 on Saturday. There is no way in hell I’m getting my truck back to even the Moscow Hill Horse Camp for an overnight and not getting stuck, even if I could off the road. Plus negative two is much too cold.

And then Johnsburg forecast for camping off NY 8 is even more of a joke. They’re getting a third of an inch of freezing rain plus 8 inches of snow tomorrow. That’s on top of the foot of snow they already have, so not much of a chance of parking anywhere along NY 8. And it’s going to be negative 11 degrees on Saturday night.

So I think I can safely cross off going camping this weekend. But alas, only 3 weeks to March and 10 weeks until April 15th. Before you know it, summer weekends up at Piseco-Powley Road will be back or so I tell myself.