Good morning! Happy 8 PM Sunset 🌇 ! Days are definitely getting longer, with lots of daylight in evening after work. Three weeks to Memorial Day Weekend Starts 🏕️ . I can’t believe that’s so close. It won’t be like last year for sure. Mostly sunny and 36 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌞 Calm wind.

A nice spring morning. 🌸 I’m thinking it won’t be long before it’s real hot out. 70 degrees days are quite rare in the Albany area. Usually it’s cool in the 60s in May until it’s in the 80s and 90s. The official 70 degree days in range are usually just due to averages, not actual conditions on the ground. It just turns out we rarely have truly average weather, it’s more a combination of the extremes. That said, with the current weather pattern, I’d say it’s going to be quite a bit on cool side of things for a while.

The express bus stop remains empty this morning, 🚏 but it looks like it’s ready whenever service returns. I can’t imagine it will be long, the New York City Subways are restoring full service in the next few weeks, and it seems like they are bringing back more state employees every day. 🚌 I am going to be working downtown more over the next few weeks, and maybe it will be transitioning back to a more normal way of doing things. But it will be a pain until they fully restore rush hour service and end capacity limits on the elevators 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦 during the evening rush. Maybe I can take the stairs. 🧗‍♂️ Honestly, I kind of liked remote work and doing things from the Spectulator library, 💻 while camping in back country, but I guess things have change, although I think it’s silly as the way we’ve done things over the past year works okay.

Been thinking about what the best way to do weather average for the blog. 🌩 Do you use the 15-year climate averages or the more typical 30-year climate averages? Good question! I feel like the 15-year averages from 2006-2020 might be too based on decadal trends that are particularly unusual and it’s possible that the 2020s will be cooler, although with climate change I have my doubts. ❄️ Most meteorologists use the 1991-2020 averages, which I might end up using just for consistency sake. Plus this allows me to celebrate at least in my head on what a nice warm day it is, even if it’s not really the case. Even with the longer averages, there is no more time periods at least in Albany where the average high temperature is no longer below freezing. So weeks of icy roads and sidewalks seem increasingly unlikely, a thing I’ve noticed in recent years. Climate is getting warmer.

Today will have patchy frost before 8am. Otherwise, increasing clouds 🌥, with a high of 63 degrees at 4pm. 6 degrees below normal, which feels like April 25th. May hasn’t quite arrived yet in the view of Mr. Weather. Calm wind becoming southeast around 6 mph in the afternoon. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. The high last year was 65 degrees. The record high of 92 was set in 1930. 0.2 inches of snow fell back in 1967.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:53 pm with sun having an altitude of 64.3° from the due south horizon (-6.5° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 2.9 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 7:23 pm with the sun in the west-northwest (288°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-northwest (294°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 8:03 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 10 seconds with dusk around 8:33 pm, which is one minute and 6 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 9:13 pm. At sunset, look for rain showers 🌧 and temperatures around 55 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 20 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 20 seconds over yesterday.

I want to get to store and get groceries and supplies some time this morning. 🏪 I have a meeting at 1 PM, and I like to go out during my lunch time, but I might take it a bit early to get it done. Last night, I put some baking soda on the carpet where I think I noticed the smell yesterday, and left the windows open last night, vacuuming things up this morning, and now it doesn’t have that pungent smell I noticed last night. 👃 I still want to get some air freshers and additional cleaning supplies too. While I don’t know when my landlord is coming over for repairs, I figure I’ve done my due diligence by notifying him of problems I’ve notice and it’s good to get things cleaner. 🧹 Often I delay cleaning, but it’s nice not having dust and dirt everywhere.

Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly after 3am. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 41 degrees at 6am. 6 degrees below normal, which is similar to April 25th. Southeast wind 5 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2020, we had light rain in the evening, which ended and it became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 35 degrees. The record low of 26 occurred back in 1968.

Tomorrow will have a chance of showers. Cloudy 🌦, with a high of 56 degrees at 4pm. 13.9 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical East wind 5 to 7 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning with more sun in the afternoon. The high last year was 57 degrees. The record high of 91 was set in 1936. There was a dusting of snow in 1977.❄ If it’s not too wet, maybe that’s a good day to walk out to Five Rivers with the binoculars and observe spring birds, like I do nearly every weekend these days when I’m in town. 🐦

Looking ahead to Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 62. 😎 West wind 7 to 10 mph. Maximum dew point of 39 at 8am. Typical average high for the weekend is 69 degrees. Sunday seems like the best day of the weekend, I am probably going to go hiking somewhere in the Heldebergs. Maybe Thacher Park, although I kind of prefer to go some where a little more wild with fewer people. Maybe Rensselearville State Forest, after noon when the spring turkey hunters are done. 🦃

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Memorial Day Weekend Starts 🏕️ when the sun will be setting at 8:23 pm with dusk at 8:57 pm. On that day in 2020, we had hot and humid weather with temperatures between 83 and 68 degrees. I remember that well from working up in Spectulator and camping near Mason Lake. Busy, working weekend holiday, but at least I was up north. Typically, the high temperature is 75 degrees. We hit a record high of 93 back in 2016.

Not sure what my Memorial Day Weekend will be like this year, 🐜 but I know that the black flies wait in waiting. Maybe I should plan somewhere are fewer black flies. I could do wilderness camping this year, and avoid crowds at one of state forests outside of mountains. Or I could go up to Vermont or the Adirondacks and swat the black flies. Not sure which days I will be in the office and which days will be remote, so that might depend where I have to go and how god my cell service must be. 📱 If I am planning to work remote, I’ll have to be somewhat near a WI-FI signal as I am reducing my plan to correlate with spending more time in the office, and because I don’t need it as much with things re-opening. I wonder how long before the library is fully re-opened for work inside? 📚