Delmar, New York

Good evening. While the evening started fairly clear the clouds are creeping in and temperatures around 52. Monday is definitely going to be a cloudy one. Rain comes for Tuesday, maybe a half inch or maybe a bit more. We could certainly use it.

Definitely starting to green up in Delmar and most certainly in the city. Tuesday’s rain will help. Tonight is going to be cool at 36 degrees, but at least in the lower elevations we aren’t looking at frost. Tomorrow look for 60 degrees and cloudy with rain late. It looks like the best chance for rain at this point is Tuesday before dawn through midday.

I definitely want rain to reduce the fire risk. While I’m always careful with fire and will keep it in the ring, you can’t be too careful these days. We have fallen behind somewhat in rain, and while small campfires aren’t banned unlike brush burning, common sense has to prevail. I am bringing the Big Buddy heater, so I can use that to stay warm in the evening but I would prefer a good fire.

It looks like the rain will be mostly if not entirely gone for the first night of my trip. I have the tarp but I don’t expect to use it the first night. I’m going to buy firewood so I’m not worried about the woods being wet. I want to leave work on Tuesday at 2 pm, but I know that ain’t that realistic. I do hope to leave before 5 but I don’t know.

I am going to pack a lot of the clothes I will need tonight and have the kayak on the roof of the truck tomorrow night. Then it’s just that perishable and personal care items to pack for Tuesday morning. I’ll stop at Stewart’s on the way out to buy Night Crawlers and kiln dried wood. I have lighter fluid and will bring paper to get the fire started. I should be to camp by dusk and I’ll have my lights to get set up. I’ll set up the camp stove and coffee pot for morning, so I’ll have coffee ready bright and early for Wednesday at camp.

It’s a bit difficult sorting clothes under the red light in my bedroom. They all look strange. Very little color recognition. But I’m avoiding using white light bulbs that can throw off sleep. I’ve started to draw my curtains at night to keep the blue LED or high intensity discharge lighting from the gas station down the way out of view. I think I’m going to eventually swap out one of the lights in the overhead fixture in the bathroom with a red bulb and put the white bulb in the empty socket on the mirror so I have red light for night time bathroom use but good bright white light for shaving in the morning. The light in the shower might be a little red but I don’t care. As long as I don’t trip and have adequate light, I don’t care if things are a bit red. Red light is so much easier on the eyes at night. I swear by it.

Speaking of light bulbs, I bought a new 3 watt LED light to light up the flag. Hopefully it will be bright enough to do its job and be easier on the battery when camping. The 7 watt bulb I currently use still works but I figured why not try some more up to date technology that will help the battery last longer and provide some more direct light. It was only like $5.

I’m off to bed. Good night. Dawn tomorrow is at 5:26 and sunrise at 5:57 am.

Cloudy and 65 degrees. Later 51 degrees with rain showers. Surprisingly not that humid this evening despite the showers that are around tonight. Possibly thunderstorm later. Cloudy start to tomorrow with a breeze, warming up to a seasonable 61 with more sun later. Dawn at 5:29 AM and sunrise at 5:59. First sunrise of the year before 6 AM. Days are definitely getting longer. 13 hours and 45 minutes between sunrise and sunset.

I hope you had a good Earth Day, regardless of how clique it has become in recent years. I walked nearly five miles – walking is probably the single best thing you can do for the environment. When you walk you not only don’t burn fossil fuels, you improve your health and the health of the environment. People talk a lot about the impact of burning fossil fuels but it’s de minis compared to highway construction and use. Cars have an enormous impact on the environment. Walking around your town helps you understand it better.

Tomorrow I’m thinking about walking out to Five Rivers Environmental Education Center, then driving down to the Hudson River and doing some fishing down at the river. I also got to head to store. Maybe wash the caked on mud off my truck. Start packing and planning for my trip.

Good morning! Happy Earth Day. It’s also Friday. Yeah. Rain and 60 degrees right now outside. Showers on and off all day, the heaviest rain may occur midday. They are getting more rain to the north of the city but that could change. 75 degrees expected this afternoon.

Bring a rain coat today. The best way to celebrate Earth Day is with earth aka mud and to have mud, you need rain. A muddy truck trail or dirt road awaits you in the wilderness.

Showers are likely tonight with a low around 51. Decreasing clouds and 61 for Saturday and sunny and 60 for Sunday.

Have a great Earth Day and enjoy playing with the Unemployment Rate Map.

Good evening. Mostly cloudy on this night with the April Pink Moon overhead, given a soft wispy glow behind the clouds. Mild around 68 degrees around ten o’clock hour. Right now I’m sitting out back enjoying a cold one before I head back in shortly to watch the PBS Newshour and retire to bed.

I am hoping we get some good rain tomorrow so things aren’t so dry. Red flag conditions today but a 70% chance of showers come morning and likely showers by afternoon tomorrow. Up to a quarter inch of rain, which admittedly isn’t much but better than nothing. 75 degrees for the high tomorrow. I may end up changing my camping plans to go to another location if it stays so dry, as I like having a good campfire but not when it’s bone dry and you have to worry about embers kicking up a fire. While residential brush burns are banned camp fires are allowed unless it gets much drier but expect it will green up, especially in the Finger Lakes. Had the Pete Grannis gotten his way, all open burning would have been banned back in 2009.

Tonight we are looking at a low around 56 degrees. That’s more of what is to be expected around June 9th then late April but so be it.

So I got the propane campstove I’ve been researching for a while now. While not a big purchase at about $100, I had been planning on getting a good quality propane stove I could run off the propane tank that I bought for the Big Buddy Heater. I figured I would get the stove once it was warm enough to not need the heater on in the morning as its not going to be useful at the same time. I ended up getting a Camp Chef Everett Stove, their most powerful tabletop stove with a maximum BTU of 20,000 per burner which is twice as hot as a base propane stove. I had studied the reviews and was quite pleased with it when I got it out of the box. I cooked some sausages on it and it sure heated them up fast in water but also ratcheted down well to prevent burning. I do need to get another propane hose so I can use it at the same time as the lantern.

I’m getting excited about my Finger Lakes trip. Tuesday will be hear before you know it. This is the first big trip I’ve taken since West Virginia last fall. The later sunsets combined with nicer weather should lead to one of best trips I’ve taken in a while. I hope to catch many fish, have some fun paddling, do some hiking and seeing some great wildlife at Montezuma.

I will do a fair amount of packing this weekend and will put the kayak on my truck on Sunday. Monday evening is the Young Democrats meeting, so I won’t have a lot of time to pack on Monday evening, and I plan to leave for my trip right from work. I will buy most of my groceries and supplies out in the Finger Lakes.

I continue to take full advantage of my hacked version of the MMQGIS plug-in to export KML maps from QGIS. While QGIS has long had KML export it didn’t have the ability to attach the color ramp to the export. Then I can adjust and set the color ramp in QGIS rather than do it programmatically outside of the program. Tomorrow’s map will pull data from the NYS’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics data. More census data next week. I love the ease I can toy away with color ramps with KML now like I could only previously do with static maps. Mapping and working with data can be best summed up with – It’s fun.

Went down to the park this evening but because I was playing with the stove didn’t get there until fairly late. And with the clouds dusk came early. At least it was mild.

I’m tired and off to bed. Dawn tomorrow is 5:30 am and sunrise at 6 AM. Sleep well and enjoy tomorrow – it’s Earth Day.