Good morning! After the long weekend, the work week returns. The good news: four weeks to Christmas. That’s a Monday, so it’s also a long weekend. Mostly cloudy and 39 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a west breeze at 14 mph. The skies will clear around 11 am. Cool but clear later on today.

Today will be mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high of 40 degrees at 11am. Three degrees below normal. Breezy, with a northwest wind 14 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 31 mph. A year ago, we had cloudy skies with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 42 degrees. The record high of 66 was set in 1896. 4.8 inches of snow fell back in 1940.

The sun will set at 4:24 pm with dusk around 4:55 pm, which is 27 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for mostly clear conditions and 36 degrees. Breezy, 17 mph breeze from the west-northwest. Today will have 9 hours and 21 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 35 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly clear, with a low of 18 degrees at 5am. 10 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 13 at 5am; Northwest wind 5 to 9 mph becoming calm in the evening. In 2016, we had mostly clear skies. It got down to 20 degrees. The record low of 6 occurred back in 1951.

I ended up catching the later bus to work today, because my sinuses were really plugged when I first got up, and struggled to get moving this morning. I think I will be fine today at work. I don’t know if was coming in from the cold weather that plugged them up or if I picked up another bug along the way. I guess I should have stayed home but if I stayed home every time I felt a little sick from my mildewy apartment, I would never be at work. 

It was a nice trip this past weekend, and by taking NY 30 to Delanson Church Road, past Mariaville to US 20 I avoided almost all of the holiday traffic coming home. I wish I could have had somewhat better weather but indeed, it’s late November. You can’t expect real warm and sunny days this time of year. I’m still hopeful that later in the next few weeks I can get back up north. So far next weekend looks pretty nice but things can change. Next Monday might be a good one to take off to extend the weekend. If the forecast remains true for the next seven days. 

I accidentally posted a bunch of pictures yesterday, that were supposed to be posted over time. There is a bug in the code of my blog, Still I have several more to go through and post over time.  I think I made some nice videos and will have more maps and interactive content to post this week. People complain that I whine too much about our country going to all hell in a hand basket but I don’t care. Hopefully with winter coming I can dig through some data and make up more maps and charts. I’ve been busy lately, and spending more time working on electronics then coming up with interesting infographics. 

Today is cyber Monday but I’ve not seen any M.2 SSD drives at an affordable price for my laptop, at least not at the price I want. I’ve heard there is a real or imaginary shortage of flash memory, which is keeping prices up. Plus with my smartphone and growing interest in electronics, I use my laptop less and less, and I’m not really sure how much faster QGIS would be on an SSD as it’s mostly CPU intensive once booted.

That said, I’m looking at electronics soldering irons as my soldering gun will be much too hot for electronic work. I also want to buy some perf board and non-lead solder and solder wick to start permanently assembling my electronics projects. I’m going to master non-lead solder as that’s the future even if it’s harder to work with as it doesn’t flow as well. Plus it’s less toxic when the electronics are discarded and burnt. 

Looking ahead, there are 4 weeks until Christmas when the sun will be setting at 4:27 pm with dusk at 4:59 pm. On that day in 2016, we had drizzle then mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 43 and 21 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 66 back in 1889.