Happy Weekend! Partly cloudy and 3 degrees in Delmar, NY. Breezy, 18 mph breeze from the west-northwest with gusts up to 30 mph. The current wind chill is -17. The skies will clear around 10 pm. I guess it’s pretty cold out this evening but I don’t know, I wore gloves and a face mask so it didn’t feel all that cold. Also helped that the bus was on time and real time bus info was accurate. 

Tonight will be mostly cloudy, with a low of -5 degrees at 5am. 21 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -25 at 5am; Northwest wind around 16 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. In 2017, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 12 degrees. The record low of -19 occurred back in 1996.

Tonight will have a Waning Gibbous Moon with 78% illuminated with 32 rising at 9:09 pm. The moon will set tomorrow at 10:38 am. The Last Quarter Moon is on Sunday night with a chance of snow. The Blue Moon is on Tuesday, January 30th. The sun will rise at 7:25 am with the first light at 6:53 am, which is 6 seconds earlier than yesterday. Tonight will have 14 hours and 48 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 7 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly sunny and cold, with a high of 2 degrees at 12pm. Cold day, 28 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -26 at 6am; Northwest wind 15 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 33 mph. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 26 degrees. Shrug, it’s winter. The record high of 71 was set in 2007. 12.7 inches of snow fell back in 2002.

Looking ahead to Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 14. Calm wind becoming south 5 to 8 mph in the afternoon. Bundling up, that should be fine weather for skiing.   Typical average high for the weekend is 31 degrees.

This weekend I will finish up my LED driver project, fixing the dead pixels on the strip and finishing packaging that up. Tomorrow I plan to run to Walmart to buy a couple of sheets of foam board, and exacto knife and paint so I can work on my LED sign board next. I was hoping that the MAX7219 modules would arrive for the weekend so I could work on that too but that was not to be. In preparation though I plan to splice a USB cable I have to power them. 

Not sure when I am going to get out camping again, but certainly not this weekend. Maybe if it warms up for the Martin Luther King Weekend, I’ll be able to get our camping. A lot will depend on the weather. If not, I’ll just have to wait a few more weeks. Eventually the weather will moderate, and indeed I expect a much warmer second half of the month. 

But other than that I’m tired and will head to bed early tonight. Tomorrow besides running to Walmart, I’ll bundle up and walk down to the library for a few hours. I think I was originally going to meet my parents for lunch but with the cold weather, I just don’t know of they’re up to it. That’s fine, I just kind of want to relax this weekend. 

During lunch time, I walked for about 45 minutes in the concourse, but I conced I should be doing more. Well at least I bought a lot of veggies the last time I went to the store. Maybe I should ride the exercise bike for a while this evening. 

Traffic heading out of city has been a breeze, I should be home shortly. When I get home, I’ll turn up the electric heat upstairs and the gas up a few more degrees downstairs, as I’m sure it hasn’t kept up with the cold temperatures. The electric heats up quickly but for safety and conserving  I don’t leave it on when I’m not home. Sixty is plenty warm for me, anything above that seems a bit too warm for my tastes to say nothing of my budget.   

In four weeks on February 2 the sun will be setting at 5:11 pm, which is 33 minutes and 56 seconds later then tonight. In 2017 on that day, we had snow, mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 35 and 18 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 32 and 15 degrees. The record high of 53 degrees was set back in 1981.

Looking ahead, Ground Hog Day is in 4 weeks, Good Friday is in 12 weeks and Memorial Day Weekend Starts is in 20 weeks. Spring will come, I tell myself. 

Only 139 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!