Good evening! Happy Valentines Day Eve. February is halfway done and tomorrow is going to be warm enough to open up the windows and let some fresh air in. That makes me happy.

Mostly clear and 43 degrees for the evening walk 🚶 here in Delmar. 🌃 Calm wind. With those clear skies cooling off quickly. But it will rebound quickly tomorrow as we have our first real spring thaw.

I was pleasantly surprised that I got released at 5 o’clock on this Valentines Day ♥ and was able to take the express bus 🚍 home. It’s nice having that option on a session day though who knows how long it will last as there isn’t a lot of riders right now heading out to Slingerlands or Voorheesville at least not on 5 pm bus which is less popular than the earlier express bus. The thing is that some of the former riders retired and more people nowadays are able to do hybrid or work from home 🏡. Our department wants that option but the people up top say no. Getting hard though to be competitive without that option.

It was annoying this morning that the ramp to 787 was closed again. 🚧 I wish they could wait until the off hours or at least until the end of rush hour. I don’t understand their decision making process on that. To boot the express bus 🚍 was 20 minutes late due to the driver making a wrong term. I ended up walking 🚶 most of the way to the Park and Ride as I wanted to get more steps in and it was a very pleasant morning.

Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 31 degrees at 1am. 13 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 30th. Light and variable wind becoming south 5 to 10 mph after midnight. In 2022, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 17 degrees. The record low of -22 occurred back in 1943.

Got paid today 💵 and it looks like my bills aren’t as bad as I thought they would be. I might actually have a bit extra, I might start adding more to the savings account, the first time I’ve saved money in a year but interest rates are going up and I’m concerned more about mid range expenses.

Tonight will have a Waining Crescent 🌘 Moon with 33% illuminated. The Worm 🐛 Moon is on Thursday, March 2. The darkest hour is at 12:11 am, followed by dawn at 6:26 am, and sun starting to rise at 6:55 am in the east-southeast (107°) and last for 3 minutes and 2 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 21 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 7:35 am with sun in the east-southeast (114°). Tonight will have 13 hours and 23 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 40 seconds over last night.

Been really digging into the ins and outs of machine learning. 🤖 Lately I’ve been about better ways to target 🎯 and estimate voting patterns using election results and the enrollment rolls. It would be interesting if you could target based on actual past results and demographics. I have used imputation in the past for making maps and are considering other ways I could use machine learning to better understand data. Decision trees 🎄 and random forests are particularly interesting methods.

Tomorrow will be cloudy through mid morning, then gradual clearing 🌃, with a high of 58 degrees at 3pm. 22 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 12th. Breezy, with a south wind 13 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with a few breaks of sun the afternoon. The high last year was 23 degrees. The record high of 55 was set in 2006. 9.0 inches of snow fell back in 1894.❄

I think tomorrow will be a good day to have the windows open 🔳 and let all that fresh air in. 🍃 While I’ll probably only open windows without storm windows it should be nice to enjoy the fresh air.

In four weeks on March 14 the sun will be setting in the west (268°) at 7:01 pm (Daylight Savings Time),🌄 which is one hour, 34 minutes and 36 seconds later then tonight. In 2021 on that day, we had partly sunny and temperatures between 41 and 19 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 44 and 25 degrees. The record high of 75 degrees was set back in 1946.

Looking ahead, Average High is 40 ☀️ is Next Tuesday, First Day of Spring 💮 is in 5 weeks, Average High is 50 🌸 is in 6 weeks, Mothers Day 👩‍ is in 3 months, Primary Day 🗳️ is in 18 weeks, Independence Day 🇺🇸 is in 20 weeks, World Population Day 👩‍👩‍👧‍👧 is in 21 weeks, National Nude Day 👱 is in 5 months, August 🌻 is in 24 weeks, Halloween 🎃 is in 37 weeks, Average High is 50 🍂 is in 9 months, Election Day 🗳️ is in 9 months, Repeal of Prohibition Day 🍺 is in 42 weeks and Boxing Day 🥊 is in 45 weeks.