One week until New Years Eve, might actually be cold and snowy for that. But foggy, damp and everything is kind of mush for this Christmas Eve up in the wilds of Madison County.

Good morning on this somewhat damp Christmas Eve ! 🎄 Cloudy, damp, foggy and 35 degrees at the Moscow Hill Camping Area. 🌥 There is a south breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. There is a dusting of snow on the ground. ☃ Temperatures will drop below freezing at Friday around 3 am. ☃️

It was drizzle when I first awoke 🌧️ after heading to bed 🛏 early last night due to the rain. It tapered off early this morning but left everything a damp slushy mess. Eggs for breakfast were good, I’ve been poking around camp ⛺ sitting by the heater and slowly gathering firewood and chopping it up for the night ahead. 🪵🪓

Today will have a chance of showers, mainly before 3pm. Cloudy 🌦, with a high of 39 degrees at 5pm. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 14th. South wind 5 to 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 15 degrees. The record high of 72 was set in 2015. 13.0 inches of snow fell back in 1966.❄

I swear there are two types of winter days when camping. 🌬️☃️ Bitterly cold but sunny and rainy and damp. Today is the later. It’s fine but the forecast was so much more optimistic a few days back. I was hoping for sun ☀ today for a nice walk 🚶 in the woods and some Christmas Eve bird 🐦 watching. Tomorrow, Christmas might be slightly better but I have my doubts. It’s still nice to be away and it’s not real cold.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:02 pm with sun having an altitude of 23.8° from the due south horizon (-46.8° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.6 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:47 pm with the sun in the southwest (230°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (238°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:33 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 26 seconds with dusk around 5:04 pm, which is 34 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Full 🌝 Moon in the east-northeast (78°) at an altitude of 25° from the horizon, 237,846 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:41 pm. At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and temperatures around 37 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 5 minutes of daytime, an increase of 9 seconds over yesterday.

Christmas Eve will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 33 degrees at 6am. 13 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around November 12th. Light south wind. In 2022, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 11 degrees. The record low of -22 occurred back in 1969.

Yesterday I went down to Hamilton.🦆It was chilly at Woodman Pond and the Old Chenango Canal so I didn’t stay long or spend much time poking around the village. Instead I went to Price Chopper got a few extra groceries and headed over to Moscow Hill to set up camp ⛺, have a nice lunch and gather firewood for the night to come. Drizzled a bit midday then snow and sleet in the evening and rain around 8 pm.