February 8, 2020 Night

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Good evening! Mostly clear and 16 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a north-northwest breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. There are 2 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 1 pm. 🌡️

It’s cold out but not that bad without the wind. 🌕 Big ol full moon above with the icy white snow its not particularly dark out. I had a great time nice Sunday dinner with the folks, and nice hike at Holt Preserve. 🚶 Pretty with all the ice on the trees.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 12 degrees at 2am. Four degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 12 at 2am; Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening. In 2019, we had light snow in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 20 degrees. The record low of -20 occurred back in 1934.

Tonight will have a Full 🌝 Moon with 99% illuminated. At 9 PM, the moon was in the east-southeast (107°) at an altitude of 45° from the horizon, some 229,500 miles away from where you are looking up from the earth. 🚀 At the state speed limit of 55 mph, you’ll make it there by July 31st. Buckle up for safety! 💺 Yeah, that moon is a bit closer than usual but I’m not sure I’d call it a super moon as I think that’s kind of silly even if it’s a bit closer than sometimes. The darkest hour is at 12:10 am, followed by dawn at 6:34 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:03 am in the east-southeast (110°) and last for 3 minutes and 5 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 13 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 7:44 am with sun in the east-southeast (117°). Tonight will have 13 hours and 43 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 34 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have a slight chance of snow showers. Partly sunny 🌦, with a high of 35 degrees at 3pm. Two degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 15th. Calm wind becoming south 5 to 8 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 31 degrees. The record high of 57 was set in 1925. 13.7 inches of snow fell back in 1906.❄

I will probably go skiing 🎿 or for a while hike tomorrow 🚶 before going to the grocery store. 🏬 Next weekend is Presidents Day Weekend but so far the forecast looks cold and cloudy for the second half of the week but that’s a while off. Plus I am filming 📹 Reszin at her birthday party 🎂 along with Leon Dyke for the Reszin Adam’s documentary that Cynthia Pooler is putting together.

In four weeks on March 7 the sun will be setting in the west (264°) at 5:52 pm,🌄 which is 35 minutes and 25 seconds later then tonight. At that point we will be setting the clocks 🕒 ahead an hour before bed as daylight savings time will be staring. In 2019 on that day, we had cold weather, mostly sunny, snow showers and temperatures between 26 and 4 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 41 and 22 degrees. The record high of 62 degrees was set back in 1974.

Looking ahead, Daylight Savings Time 🌆 is a month away, Average High is 50 🌸 is in 7 weeks, Pink Moon 🌕 is in 2 months, Average High is 60 🌼 is in 10 weeks, Average High is 70 🐮 is in 14 weeks, Memorial Day Weekend Starts 🏕️ is in 15 weeks, and Summer ️⛱️ is in 19 weeks.

🇺🇸🦅Only 103 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

Towards the Valley

the 100% Renewable Fascade – CounterPunch.org

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Beware the Green Corporate Scam: the 100% Renewable Fascade – CounterPunch.org

It would be easy to believe that this means a great victory for the planet, that the demise of fossil fuels is incoming, that environmentalism has won and that climate change will soon be a thing of the past. Yet the foul smell emerging from tax-dodging transnationals jumping all together into a bandwagon cannot be ignored.

Despite their claims, none of the companies in the RE100 list is actually going to receive all of its energy from renewable sources. The “100% renewable” label is a fasade, a marketing gimmick used by corporations to pretend they are the good guys while their unfettered thirst for profits continues unopposed. This corporate lie is enabled by the abuse of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) which allow companies to buy their way into “green” without having to change any of their practices.

How Much Venison Are Coyotes Eating? | QDMA

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How Much Venison Are Coyotes Eating? | QDMA

Many deer hunters must now consider potential impacts of coyote predation on local deer herds. Historically confined to the western United States, coyotes have expanded throughout the eastern states and are now common across most landscapes we manage for deer. This expansion has obviously generated a lot of interest from the public, and the coyote’s ability to prey on deer makes their presence a primary consideration for deer hunters and managers. Coyotes are one of the better studied animals in North America, but most research has occurred outside of the eastern and southeastern United States.

During 2009-2011, we studied coyotes in northeastern North Carolina, and during that same time other studies on eastern coyotes revealed interesting information about coyote ecology and how coyotes could influence deer populations. The findings of these studies provided the impetus for what we refer to as the Tri-State Coyote Project, which was a cooperative effort across three states and multiple agencies. Funded by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division, and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the objective of the Tri-State Project was to study coyote populations at broad spatial scales and learn how coyote populations are structured on the landscape. Moreover, we wanted to assess prey selection of coyotes to determine potential impacts of coyotes on local deer herds. What we found has important implications for deer hunters.

How Texas is fighting back – Sports Illustrated

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Feral pigs problem in US: How Texas is fighting back – Sports Illustrated

For millions of years, as pigs snorted and snuffed their way across the planet, evolving and learning to dodge gray wolves and tigers and coyotes and alligators, they were almost assuredly safe from any potential threats from the sky.

Then they arrived in Texas, where in addition to the rare predatory large mammal, a wild pig today might be forced to evade, for example, a cascade of 5.56-caliber bullets fired from a hundred-odd feet above by an AR‑15 semiautomatic rifle in the hands of some adventurous tourist from Pennsylvania or Mexico or Australia. Unfortunately for said pig, evolution has not yet blessed him with the neck flexibility needed to look up. Thus, he hears only the thundering roar of a helicopter before it all goes down. He’ll run around, searing bursts piercing the ground around him, until inevitably he’s struck, usually a number of times, left to die in a scrub of brush or a field of cotton or a row of cornstalks. The chopper will fly away, only to move on to some other unsuspecting, ground-focused pig.