Good morning! Today has the 5:30 PM Sunset 🌇 . Four weeks to St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 . Mostly sunny and 16 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌥 There is a west-northwest breeze at 11 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is 0. There are 6 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at Monday around noontime. 🌡️

Cold but reasonably cold start to this February morning. At least it’s not snowing today, and the sky is quite blue. But tomorrow afternoon the snow returns into Friday. I normally go shopping on Thursday at lunch time, so I don’t know how that will work out. I still need to get down to the library to get the two other books I have on reserve before the reservations expire.

This morning I decided to go the french toast route. Usually that’s pretty good and easy with a well greased cast iron skillet and it only requires and egg or two. Wild blueberries, maple syrup and butter make pretty good French toast and I should have a ton of energy from all that sugar, until I start to crash mid-day. Well then I can go to the freezer and chomp on the remaining blueberries.

I am listening to the wind pick up and I think I’ll definately want to bundle up for my morning walk in about 15 minutes. The sun is nice but the wind looks nippy. It will be fine when I’m moving and the sun will help. No excuse to miss my walk today. With only one regular scheduled walk so far since Sunday, I’ve been incredibly lazy, although in the day time I’ve been doing laps up and down the stairs in my apartment, when my neighbor is gone, to burn off some calories and energy. Yesterday, I also did a lot of shoveling of the driveway.

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 26 degrees at 3pm. Nine degrees below normal. Northwest wind 9 to 11 mph. Cold but sunny. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 38 degrees. The record high of 60 was set in 1981. 11.9 inches of snow fell back in 2003.❄

Today is the Save the Pine Bush Virtual Dinner, 🍲 which this year is offering take out although I’m just doing the Zoom 📹 as I’m going to be out at my parents house tonight. Find out more at savethepinebush.org and join us. I think they are going to do a take out dinner in April, which I will probably participate in. By then I may be working downtown, although I kind of have my doubts. It seems like things are going pretty slow at this point with vaccinations, and I don’t think it will be an option for most people until summer or later. Maybe remote work will mean I can work from the Adirondacks or Green Mountains for part of this summer again.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:10 pm with sun having an altitude of 35.5° from the due south horizon (-35.3° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 8.4 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 4:51 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (248°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (255°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 5:31 pm after setting for 3 minutes with dusk around 5:58 pm, which is one minute and 17 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the First Quarter 🌓 Moon in the southwest (216°) at an altitude of 55° from the horizon, 252,249 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:32 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 23 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 8 mph. Tomorrow will have 10 hours and 44 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 45 seconds over today.

I do want to get to the store, sometime soon, as I am starting to run low on groceries a bit. The big thing I want to also get is bed sheets, as my bottom bed sheet has worn out and while I rotated it, I’ve been putting off washing them and they are getting a bit dirty. They are 12 or 13 years old now. I have those flannel sheets, but I’m not sure where they are in the attic. Thursday might be bad with snow coming but that’s when I normally like to shop — followed by WiFi time at the library.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 10 degrees at 5am. Eight degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 12 at 6pm; Northwest wind around 6 mph becoming calm in the evening. In 2020, we had clear skies in the evening, which became snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 23 degrees. The record low of -21 occurred back in 1973.

Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. 😕 Saturday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 29. Sunday, sunny, with a high near 31. Typical average high for the weekend is 36 degrees. Still not a real great weekend, but Sunday looks cold and sunny enough for good skiing. Maybe Thacher Park this time — been a while since I’ve been up that way.

I was noticing that I probably need to take the trash out in the kitchen. The thing is I’m running out of room in the outside trash cans with all the recycables being stuffed out there — especially all the paper now that they don’t have the free paper recycling anymore. Almost time for the big trip to the transfer station — but I like to do that come March year, kind of a spring cleaning. Return all the accumulated bottles and cans. Maybe if I clean out my truck, then I can start loading up the truck for that big run. As before you know it will be camping time, and I should clean the truck up for that.

🌹🌻🌼Only 31 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼 Little more than a month because February has only 28 days. St. Patrick’s Day is a month away.

One month 📅 from now will be St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 when the sun will be setting at 7:04 pm with dusk at 7:32 pm (Daylight Savings Time).