October 31, 2019 Night

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Good evening! Cloudy and 68 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ Breezy, ️16 mph breeze from the south 🌬 with gusts up to 33 mph 💨💨💨. The dew point is 65 degrees. Kind of a warm muggy night for being a few hours from November. Sleeping with the windows open tonight but they’ll be closed before I leave for work in the morning.

Tonight will have showers and possibly a thunderstorm before 3am, then showers likely. Some of the storms could produce gusty winds and heavy rain. 🌧 Low of 53 degrees at 6am. 15 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around September 21st. Breezy, with a south wind 16 to 24 mph, with gusts as high as 44 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible. In 2018, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 48 degrees. The record low of 22 occurred back in 1964.

I am starting to wonder if we will get the driving rains 💦 that Utica and Syracuse are getting tonight. Seems to be staying west. The wind was hollowing around at the bus stop this evening by the tall buildings 🏢 downtown but it’s been relatively quiet in Delmar with not a lot of rain or wind.

Tonight will have a Waxing Crescent Moon 🌒 with 27% illuminated. The moon will rise at 12:17 am. The First Quarter Moon is on Sunday night with partly cloudy skies. The Beaver Moon 🌝 is on Monday, November 11th. The sun will rise at 7:27 am with the first light at 6:58 am, which is one minute and 14 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 13 hours and 38 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 35 seconds over last night.

I rode the exercise bike 🚲 for like an hour and was able to my beloved ticker tape display working again. 📟 Now I can look at all the weather data and the time as I ride my exercise bike. I did catch up on some YouTube but most of the time on the bike I was just so singing 🎶 along with Dick Curless and David Dudley then watched a video on beaver trapping 🦝 and a farmer talking about his winter plans 🚜.

Really glad that the ticker tape display is working again. 📟 I can waste too much time watching all the different

Tomorrow will have a chance of showers, mainly before 7am. Mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 55 degrees at 6am. After that temperatures will drop into the forties as the day goes by. One degree above normal, which is similar to a typical day around October 29th. Windy, with a southwest wind 20 to 26 mph, with gusts as high as 50 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning, which became cloudy by afternoon. The high last year was 59 degrees. The record high of 78 was set in 1950. 3.9 inches of snow fell back in 1951.❄ If it’s nice enough I might try to get the express bus🚍.

In four weeks it will be Thanksgiving on November 28 the sun will be setting at 4:24 pm (Standard Time),🌄 which is one hour, 25 minutes and 48 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had partly cloudy and temperatures between 45 and 18 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 43 and 28 degrees. The record high of 68 degrees was set back in 1990.

Looking ahead, Thanksgiving 🦃 is in 4 weeks, Repeal of Prohibition Day 🍺 is in 5 weeks, Boxing Day 🥊 is in 8 weeks, New Years Eve 🎆 is in 2 months and National Cheese Lovers Day 🧀 is in 12 weeks.

Suspension Bridge Over Gorge

Squirrel

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Taken on Tuesday October 27, 2015

More thoughts on a High Voltage DC Power Grid

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The other day, I mentioned that with thyristors connected to buck and boost converters, we could have built a much more efficient Direct Current electricity grid without the inherent losses from impedance with Alternating Current. We use 60 Hz AC mainly because it works well with (large) mains transformers and has a relatively low impedance, but it still has a lot of losses from impedance compared to direct current — and causes radio noise and hum. A high-voltage, direct current grid would not only be more efficient, you could bury direct-current lines easier, and not have to worry about storm damage.

The one issue I didn’t really address is the inherent dangers of high-voltage direct current — namely the difficulty of quenching arching, due to the lack of zero voltage crossing point. Direct current, especially high voltage direct current is difficult to break, as if you break mechanically, it will arc over — quite a long distance as the natural quenching of the zero voltage crossing point doesn’t exist like with AC. You can safely break a DC current using a thyristor, but what happens if a power line mechanically fails? It could arc over for some time, before fully breaking, causing enormous amounts of heat to be produced in the mean-time, turning large sections of wire into plasma.  A high-voltage alternating current line might arc over and burn for a while, but it would relatively quickly break the connection, once enough of the line vaporized and sufficient air gap existed and the zero-point was crossed.