Good morning! Happy Ides of March ✝! Three weeks to Palm Sunday 🌴. Mostly sunny and 33 degrees at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve. There is a north breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. Temperatures will drop below freezing at around 8 pm. ☃️

Out for a walk this morning in the Pine Bush 🚶 and hope to meet some people later in the day. Really pretty morning, so much blue sky. 🌲🌲🌲Maybe later go to Thacher Park or maybe just Bennett Hill depending on the weather.

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 45 degrees at 4pm. One degree above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 17th. North wind around 8 mph. A year ago, we had rain in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 72 degrees. The record high of 72 was set in 2019. 10.4 inches of snow fell back in 1916.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 1:05 pm with sun having an altitude of 45.4° from the due south horizon (-25.3° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 5.9 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:25 pm with the sun in the west (262°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (268°) starting at 7:00 pm and lasts for 2 minutes and 54 seconds with dusk around 7:30 pm, which is one minute and 11 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:04 pm. It’s nice having the extra hour in the evening. At sunset, look for clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 37 degrees. There will be a north breeze at 8 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 56 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 55 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 16 degrees at 6am. 10 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around February 10th. North wind 5 to 7 mph. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 31 degrees. The record low of 4 occurred back in 1980. I Going to be chilly tonight, gonna have to turn the heat on before bed.

Today in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus, and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March. Plus don’t forget that song Vehicle by the Ides of March. Good song for friendly stranger in black sedans. 🚙 Nowadays they’d probably be SUVs with big speakers.

I wasn’t so freaked out about the media crap over Coronavirus 😷 but increasingly I am concerned after hearing about it on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe 🌌. The truth is that there ain’t a lot to do besides wash one’s hands 👐 good and pray 🙏. Social distancing might help but I’m skeptical – how much time ⌚ will it buy? Is it worth the high economic and social costs? I guess only time will tell. The whole situation is both abursd and kind of frightening. 👾

🌹🌻🌼Only 4 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Palm Sunday 🌴 when the sun will be setting at 7:26 pm with dusk at 7:55 pm. On that day in 2019, we had partly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 42 and 25 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 54 degrees. We hit a record high of 82 back in 1928.