A nice morning on this Friday, the Epiphany. Ample sun and 25 degrees in Delmar. There is a northwest breeze at 7 mph. I always enjoy my mile walk down to the express bus but today was particularly nice. It may be January but all that sun in my eyes felt wonderful.  Despite the sun with the weak sun angle and high pressure, we will only make it up to 28 or 29 degrees by afternoon.

The sun will set at 4:38 pm with dusk around 5:09 pm, which is 1 minutes and 1 seconds later than yesterday. I’ve definitely noticed the extra light at the bus stop lately. It’s nice. Today will have 9 hours and 13 minutes of daylight, an increase of 1 minutes and 10 seconds over yesterday. Longer days are a good thing as we head to the first day of spring in 74 short days. Remember though that spring is March 20, and it’s another month and half before it typically greens up around here.

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 14 degrees at 6am. About what you would expect for early January. It is the coldest week of the year.

Looking ahead, there are 2 weeks until Inauguration Day when the sun will be setting at 4:54 pm with dusk at 5:25 pm. On that day in 2016, we had mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 30 and 16 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 30 degrees. We hit a record high of 53 back in 2006.

Tomorrow I will go out hiking somewhere locally. Right now I’m leaning either towards either Schodack Island State Park or Hannacroix Preserve, but I could change my mind. Sunday looks to be a lot colder with the windchill but if it’s reasonably nice, I could go hiking at Thatcher Park before heading to to my parents house for Sunday dinner, because it’s been a long time since I’ve hiking up there in the OSI parcel.