Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Four weeks to Christmas 🎅. Snow, slop and 35 degrees in Delmar. ❄ There is a northwest breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. It’s snowing fairly hard but it’s warm enough that it’s mostly slop on the roads, especially the secondaries. The roads are a bit greasy, but maybe not icy. What do I know I’m not driving, although I had to walk out in the slop to catch the bus. I brought a second set of socks, I’ll need them my work boots leak. Going to warm farther today so I don’t expect much accumulation.

Temperatures will drop below freezing at tomorrow briefly around 4 am. ☃️ But I don’t expect much snow or problems getting my truck up to DeNooyer for the state inspection. I am hoping that will go well — the lights look good, and I’ve not noticed any problems while driving, except the rare time I crank the wheel really hard in a parking under very occasional conditions. I guess if something needs to be fixed, it will get fixed, and they shouldn’t have to wait for parts to be delivered, being the dealer, even if it costs a little more.🔧 I concede at some point there is a balljoint or something else that will need replacing but i don’t think it’s bad enough to warrant repair at this point as there is no handling problems in ordinary driving.

I was hoping to walk down to the express bus this morning but it didn’t happen because I was a minute or two too late. 🚉I was a bit hesitant with all the snow and then I saw the town plow come through. But I still didn’t want to rush and accidentally fall in the snow. Plus with all the slop everywhere hiking in this stuff isn’t fun even if I had leak proof boots. The local will get me where I need to go even if it’s slightly longer and less scenic. Interestingly enough, the streets are cleaner of snow slop in Albany then the burbs. Must be a little warmer in the city from the urban heat island effect.

Today will rain showers and snow likely before 11am, then a chance of rain showers between 11am and 4pm, then a chance of rain and snow showers after 4pm. Cloudy 🌧, with a high of 40 degrees at 11am. Three degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical day around December 4th. West wind 6 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. It’s going to snow a fair bit but accumulations will be light locally as it’s much too warm. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies, clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 43 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 28 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain and snow showers 🌧 and temperatures around 37 degrees. There will be a west breeze at 14 mph with gusts up to 25mph. Today will have 9 hours and 22 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 36 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of rain and snow showers before 10pm, then a chance of snow showers. Cloudy 🌧, with a low of 32 degrees at 5am. Four degrees above normal, which is similiar to a typical night around November 16th. West wind 8 to 11 mph, with gusts as high as 21 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2017, we had clear skies with more clouds in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 18 degrees. The record low of 6 occurred back in 1951.

So I found replacement screws for my laptop and once they come I will put them in so the case isn’t flexing and the mother board isn’t loose. 🔩 I am holding off on the SSD drive for now, as while it seems they’ve come down in prices, now the issue is most of the sales are seriously back-ordered, and I don’t want to be stuck for weeks with my money tied up in something that isn’t going to arrive. 💾 Even if it only takes a few minutes to install, I probably wouldn’t have the time to get the full operating system installed on it and everything heavy disk-IO like applications and certain GIS files moved over to it until the long Christmas or New Years weekends. They’re giving me both New Years Eve and Christmas Eve off this year, which is nice for a change.🎄 Lucky me.

I also did order the various little parts for the winter electronics projects from AliExpress I’m working on, including the additional LOLIN32 microprocessors, so I can upgrade the colored lighting controller later in the month, when we have shitty weather and I’m stuck at home. 🔬Getting much better at soldering too. Soldering and coding is a break from so much of the shitiness that is social media and the news nowadays. 💩 

The latest forecast 🏔 suggests this isn’t going to be a great weekend for getting out of town, with the north country getting pounded with more snow today, and the forecast looking increasingly cloudy for the weekend. 🏕 Next week I might take off some time though to travel or hike. I would like to spend some more time in the wilderness. Maybe I will do a mid-week evening hike up Overlook Mountain, that’s always a fun December hike to see the sunset. It’s tough to plan on getting out, with the snow coming so early this year, and being so cold and gray.

Looking ahead, there are 4 weeks until Christmas 🎅 when the sun will be setting at 4:27 pm with dusk at 4:59 pm. By that time of year you can start to notice the days getting a little longer. On that day in 2017, we had snow, heavy fog, freezing fog, mist, squalls, partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 33 and 17 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 66 back in 1889.