This morning in Albany, we are up 39 degrees under fairly sunny skies and nice weather conditions. There is a southwest breeze at 10 mph with gusts up to 21 mph. Looking at 56 degrees later, which ain’t bad for February. 18 degrees above normal. West wind 10 to 17 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. A year ago, we had snow and a high of 39 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1997. 3.6 inches of snow fell back in 2013. Winters aren’t as cold as they once were. That said, we are going to have a big cool down later in the week (scroll down on the blog to see the new interactive graph that gives you all the details). Less sun by mid-week.

The bus I am taking downtown smelled like burning brakes, but it made it downtown without a fire or the brakes failing. I still think the brakes are dragging a bit on the bus. It’s one of CDTA’s oldest Bus Rapid Transit-style Gillig Hybrids, I think they bought as a pilot bus for testing prior to introdocuing Bus Plus.

The sun will set at 5:43 pm with dusk around 6:11 pm, which is 1 minutes and 15 seconds later than yesterday. Today will have 11 hours and 11 minutes of daylight, an increase of 1 minutes and 51 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy, with a low of 34 degrees at 1am. 13 degrees above normal. Southwest wind around 6 mph becoming light and variable after midnight. In 2016, it got down to 32 degrees under mostly cloudy skies. The record low of -10 occurred back in 1950.

While right now I’m running the old method of sharing blog posts, I did fix the broken new method, which only was broke because I forgot to comment out the save_posts action in WordPress, causing many draft posts to be accidentally shared.

Still hoping to get the car wash today after work, assuming the weather remains decent. I don’t want leave the mud and salt on the truck, and hopefully the issues they were having at the car wash will be resolved come this evening. I wish we had more light in the evening, although that will change a week from Sunday, when the time changes. 13 days until the time change, for those keeping track of such things.

March 1st is Wednesday. Before you know it will be camping season. After disconnecting the solar conntroller, which I rarely use, the accessory battery is charging and holding it’s charge much better. That said, once the battery protection relay is installed, I will probably replace the battery so I have maximum charge for the summer.

Thirteen weeks from now will be Memorial Day. I know I can’t wait for the warmer temperatures this summer. I shouldn’t be as busy, so I hope to take more road trips this summer and into the fall. It will be nice to go back to the summer and spent some serious time at the poolside at Watkins Glen, and enjoy nice long evenings next to campfire, listening the soft mooing of cows in the distance at Finger Lakes National Forest. Plus many good trips to the Adirondacks.

Not sure what my plans are for Memorial Day Weekend; I might go to Vermont or maybe the Adirondacks. Moose River Plains to be a rather muddy mess during Memorial Day Weekend, and not all of the roads are open, so I may avoid that. I don’t think I will go to North-South Lake either — that place is a zoo on Memorial Day Weekend, and honestly, I don’t like being that close to other campers and the lake is less fun to paddle then you might think being a reservior with a very rocky bottom.

As previously noted, there are 7 weeks until Patriots Day when the sun will be setting at 7:40 pm with dusk at 8:09 pm (Daylight Savings Time). Almost spring time at that point — especially in city — if we have mild temperatures in April. On that day in 2016, we had mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 76 and 36 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 59 degrees. We hit a record high of 91 back in 2002.