Good morning on this cold but clear Christmas Day! 🎅 Partly cloudy and 17 degrees at the Elm Avenue Town Park. 🌥 There is a south breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. There are 2 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at Wednesday around 11 am. 🌡️

Out for a walk this morning at the town park 🏞. A chilly morning. I was going to walk 🚶 out to Five Rivers via Meads Road but I’m joining my parents later today for Christmas lunch 🍲 and I got a late start so I decided to save that hike for tomorrow and do the town park nature trail this morning.

My knee is feeling better 🧎after last night’s fall out walking. It was sore for a while and knee bloody but I didn’t rip my jeans 👖. I should wear a head lamp 🔦 while walking this time of year in the dark but it’s just another thing to remember and I like walking in the darkness and looking at the stars. 🌟

Heat is back on most of the time in my apartment ♨ which I’m not happy about but I will turn it down in the day time and did the best I could patch the air leaks around the door. 🚪 And I keep the thermostat as low as possible.

Christmas Day will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 26 degrees at 2pm. 10 degrees below normal. Southwest wind around 7 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph. A year ago, we had rain in the morning, which became light rain by afternoon. The high last year was 35 degrees. The record high of 66 was set in 1889. 19.2 inches of snow fell back in 2002.❄

Cold ❄ by recent standards but maybe not that cold historically. Going to be in the fifties for the New Year but maybe rainy for New Years Eve. I don’t think Brookfield Horse 🐴 Camp is going to happen this NYE or anywhere else but I’m still thinking Martin Luther King Jr Weekend may be good for skiing 🎿 although the weather may turn bitterly cold again by then.

Probably a good day for the Christmas Day bird 🐦 count with the clear skies and less wind and more sun ☀ after yesterday. Saw a great big red headed woodpecker among many others in my walk through the woods. Birds certainly like the weather today more than yesterday though I’m sure they’re just bulking up on calories when it’s somewhat moderating the weather.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:56 am with sun having an altitude of 24° from the due south horizon (-46.8° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer.

The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:42 pm with the sun in the southwest (230°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (238°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:28 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 25 seconds with dusk around 4:59 pm, which is 37 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the southwest (217°) at an altitude of 15° from the horizon, 226,412 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:36 pm.

At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌃 and temperatures around 24 degrees. There will be a west-southwest breeze at 7 mph with gusts up to 21mph. Today will have 9 hours and 6 minutes of daytime, an increase of 14 seconds over yesterday.

Listening to Peter Paul and Mary’s Moving album this morning. 🎧 I haven’t listened to it in a long time and I’m so over all things Christmas 🤶 but now that I’ve gotten older I don’t think much about the seasons except for long weekends when I get home. I listen to the radio less and less and don’t own a television so I’m increasingly isolated from the whole holiday scene. I’m mostly focused at this point at making it through the winter months.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌃, with a low of 12 degrees at 6am. Eight degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 8 at 5am; Southwest wind 3 to 8 mph. In 2021, we had light drizzle in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 34 degrees. The record low of -17 occurred back in 1914.