Good morning! Dark and cloudy at the freezing point for my morning. ☁ Damp with coming rain showers. ☔ There is a south-southeast breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. Probably the darkest morning I can remember for the morning walk except for Election Day last year when I was up early to see the lunar eclipse.

Out for the morning walk 🚶 on this dark morning. I think part of the reason it’s so dark out is I’m actually on time ⌚ for once for the walk. I was running slow getting up and had a quick breakfast which helped. At the end of the day yesterday I ended up with 19,500 steps or about nine miles which isn’t bad for a weekday. 👣 My goal these days is walk an average of seven miles a day or fifty miles a week.

Today will rain and snow likely before 1pm, then a chance of rain after 2pm. Cloudy 🌧, with a high of 42 degrees at 4pm. Already a few flurries around. Nine degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 6th. South wind 7 to 13 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 31 degrees. The record high of 67 was set in 2020. 12.8 inches of snow fell back in 2011.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:04 pm with sun having an altitude of 25.7° from the due south horizon (-45.1° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 12.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:59 pm with the sun in the southwest (233°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (241°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:44 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 20 seconds with dusk around 5:14 pm, which is one minute and 6 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:50 pm. At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and temperatures around 41 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 10 mph with gusts up to 21mph. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 24 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 31 seconds over today.

Tonight will rain.🌧️ Temperature rising to around 49 by 5am. South wind 7 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 21 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. In 2022, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 25 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1968.

I’ve been noticing that the solar isn’t charging the batteries 🔋 as well on my truck as it should. It might be the cloudy weather but from the meter it looks like I have a phantom 👻 load somewhere. Panel itself is sending quite a bit of power to the batteries – a few kilowatt hours since camping in December but it seems like the batteries are always a bit low.

Cold start to the Kings 👑 weekend but improving as the days go on. Saturday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 33. Northwest wind around 10 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Sunday, sunny, with a high near 35. Dirty eight and sunny for Martin Luther King Day. Typical average high for the weekend is 33 degrees.

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Ground Hog Day 🐻 when the sun will be setting at 5:11 pm with dusk at 5:39 pm. On that day in 2022, we had snow, mostly cloudy and temperatures between 27 and 20 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 53 back in 1981.