Good evening! On and off rain and 62 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☔ Not enough rain though but the threat of rain scared me from my evening walk. There is a southeast breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 58 degrees. The skies will clear Monday around 7 am.

Did the Save the Pine Bush hike this morning🌲 then stopped by Falvo’s and got meatballs🍝, walked down to the library then came home fixed one of my displays, and then spent some time cleaning the bathroom.🚿 Fun stuff. I figured Falvo’s doesn’t have long left as they have a for sale sign and the owners are a million years old. Got to enjoy it while it’s still a thing.

I’ve been pretty disappointed with the rain today, 💦 we could use some more but it ain’t falling from the sky. The grass is going to get really dried out and we are entering a drought if we don’t soon start getting some more rain. 🌾 Thunderstorms from the hot weather could also help bring some rain later in the week and Thursday is likely to be unsettled. I’m just hoping things don’t get too dried out.

Tonight will have a chance of showers. Patchy fog after 1am. Otherwise, cloudy ☁, with a low of 61 degrees at 12am. Typical for tonight. Maximum dew point of 61 at 6am. South wind around 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies. It was sticky. It got down to 64 degrees. The record low of 44 occurred back in 1932.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous Moon 🌔 with 85% illuminated. The moon will set at 3:09 am. The 🌕 is on Wednesday night with showers is likely. The sun will rise at 5:18 am with the first light at 4:43 am, which is 18 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 8 hours and 41 minutes of darkness, an increase of 12 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have a chance of showers before 10am, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms between 10am and 3pm, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 3pm. Mostly cloudy ☁, with a high of 78 degrees at 3pm. Two degrees below normal. Still much warmer than today. Maximum dew point of 68 at 4pm. South wind around 6 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. I’m hoping for the half inch of rain before the heat kicks in. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. It was very sticky. The high last year was 81 degrees. The record high of 96 was set in 1943.

In four weeks on July 21 the sun will be setting at 8:26 pm,🌄 which is 10 minutes and 44 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2017 on that day, we had partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 86 and 63 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 83 and 62 degrees. The record high of 101 degrees was set back in 1930.

I am thinking about taking a long weekend to the Adirondacks next weekend.😎 Going to be hot but I’ll call the potholers my home for most of the weekend. It could be very nice up north even if it’s brutally hot in Albany. I might take off Monday or maybe Friday. Monday looks better weather wise but also brutally hot.

I decided to re-wire the truck so I can switch the solar panel to also charge the starting battery while parked. Not a big change but I do need a diode and a single pole double throw switch.🔦 I was going to use one of the diode I have at home but I need something to do that I am sure is rated at a higher reverse voltage to ensure I don’t get current leakage back to idle engine sensor or the relay that powers my CB radio when the truck is off. It’s a low power application (we’re talking milliamps of current) to drive the relay, so I can use a small diode but it does have to be rated at least 20 volt to block reverse voltage. This way on a sunny day parked multiple days at one campsite I can leave the motor off yet not worry about wearing the starting battery down by the door light or the computer booting each time I open the door.🔋 Mid winter when I’m parked for a week or longer I can keep the starting and accessory battery fully charged even if it is below zero. The wiring changes is minor to hook up the dual throw switch – just need to splice a few wires in the cab, swap out the existing switch there. I can’t imagine it will take more than fifteen minutes or cost me more than $5 in parts for the switch and diodes ($2 for twenty Shottsky diodes) based on my pricing out of things. I need more diodes for other projects I’m planning on building too. I am a bit worried that I could accidentally put it in the wrong position while camping at night and get stranded but I think that risk is mitigated by the low voltage disconnect and the fact that the solar panel works a bit slowly at lower output even in the shade.

I continue to play with the Esp32 LIon Light I bought and are becoming more and more impressed with the technology and low cost.👓 I do think for many of my projects I’ll need some level shifters and also some linear regulators as the ESP32 Lion Lite lacks an easy way to feed voltage in from the circuit board through the built-in linear regulator. That said an external 3.3 volt linear regulator is not only cheap and but also will keep heat away from the sensitive equipment on the board. Linear regulators seem wasteful but when your converting 5 volt USB power to 3.3 volt, for a 50 mW processor, your only discarding 0.085 watts of electricity.

Looking ahead, Sunset Before 7:30 PM 🌆 is in 10 weeks, Autumn 🍂 is in 13 weeks, Average High is 60 🍂 is in 16 weeks, Northern Zone Regular Season 🦌 is in 17 weeks, Regular Deer Season in Southern Zone 🦌 is in 21 weeks and Buy Nothing Day 🛍️ is in 5 months.