Good evening! Partly cloudy and 38 degrees in Delmar. There is a south-southeast breeze at 10 mph. The skies will clear Friday around 1 am. Today was a nice day weather wise but maybe a bit chilly. But the sun sets so early and the Pine Bush Dinner meant I didn’t get home until pretty late. 

Interesting presentation at the Save the Pine Bush dinner on the ultra efficient ground source aka geothermal heat pumps but also kind of depressing when you realize how energy intensive they are. Your not going off the largely fossil fuel fired electric grid with heat pumps no matter how many solar panels or wind turbines you have on your house. Sinking heat or cold into the ground is very energy efficient but it still requires incredible amounts of electric power. For a large sububranite house that currently consumes 1,000 gallons of oil a year, the ground source heat pump would use about 7 megawatt hours per year or 7,000 kwH. Maybe burning 800 watts a hour, every hour of the day 24-7-365 is better than burning all that oil but neither is sustainable. Nor is it really a serious solution for heating in urban areas as its still a lot of energy, unlikely to ever be sourced from renewable sources or even by burning uranium in those quantities. Drilling geothermal heat sink wells turns out to be pretty difficult in cities too, especially as you to tear up streets and sidewalks to site wells and avoid hitting the numerous utilities and archeological items below ground. 

Tonight will have a chance of rain, mainly after 3am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 38 degrees at 10pm. Four degrees above normal. South wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2016, we had light rain and mist in the evening, remaining overcast into the early morning. It got down to 39 degrees. The record low of 7 occurred back in 1972.

Tonight will have a Waning Crescent Moon with 5% illuminated.The moon will rise tomorrow at 4:41 am. The New Moon is on Friday night. The Cold Moon is on Sunday, December 3rd. The sun will rise at 6:48 am with the first light at 6:17 am, which is one minute and 15 seconds later than yesterday. Tonight will have 14 hours and 17 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes and 7 seconds over last night.

Rain and clouds tomorrow. Not a nice day. Tomorrow will rain likely, mainly before 11am, then a chance of showers after noon. Mostly cloudy, with a high of 49 degrees at 1pm. Three degrees above normal. South wind 7 to 16 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. Better weather for Friday but continued cold. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 55 degrees. The record high of 71 was set in 2006. 3.4 inches of snow fell back in 2002.

Friday will be nicer but still quite cold and windy. I have too much to get done at work this week so I’m not going to take it off but I will take some long weekends in December. Or maybe go hiking midweek like up Overlook Mountain as I often do in December. 

Not a particularly nice weekend on tap. Saturday, a chance of snow before 10am, then rain. High near 44. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. Sunday, a chance of showers before 1pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 44. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Typical average high for the weekend is 47 degrees.

I am still waiting on the transistors but I have the LEDs and power supply now, so I should be able to hook up the LED string this weekend and play with developing the code. Hopefully this will be as good as I hope. If not it’s an experiment and there is more to learn going forward. The trick is to get as much light as possible in places I need the light of just the perfect temperature. I’m going to stay in town and work on that during the rainy cold and wet weekend. I’m not going to be out there in the woods for regular season, hopefully though you’ll have good luck and get meat on the table. It would be a little different if I had land and wasn’t stuck as a public lands hunter who either has no place to hang a deer in the suburbs. I should hunt more, always buy my license but I lack the skill and patience. Eventually though I’ll own land in God’s Country, and my focus will be on acreage more than a big fancy grid tied house. I like working with low voltage electricity. I’d rather know exactly where my power and food is coming from and where my waste is going. Maybe I’ll get the bars cut and drilled for mounting the solar panel on my truck. 

In four weeks on December 13 the sun will be setting at 4:22 pm, which is 9 minutes and 39 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2016 on that day, we had snow, mist, mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 39 and 32 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 37 and 22 degrees. The record high of 58 degrees was set back in 1984.

Looking ahead, Coldest Day of Year (Avg. 14-30 degrees) is in 8 weeks and Inaugeration Day 2021 is in 166 weeks.