January 4, 2017 9 AM Update

We are up to 37 degrees this morning as we head up to 44 later on. Some fog in the city, the Normans Kill is really roaring along. Kind of a damp winter morning out there. There is a crow dancing around on the top of a snow plow at Albany Nursery. Must be something good like garbage or a dead animal around to eat. 

The sun will set at 4:36 pm with dusk around 5:07 pm, which is 57 seconds later than yesterday. It’s noticeably brighter at the bus stop in the evening, although that might have to do more with them fixing the street lights then longer days. Today will have 9 hours and 10 minutes of daylight, an increase of exactly one minute over yesterday.

Tonight will be scattered snow showers, mainly before midnight. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 20 degrees at 6am. Five degrees above normal. Breezy, with a west wind 17 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 31 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2016, it got down to 2 degrees under mostly clear skies. The record low of -24 occurred back in 1904.

For those already tired of winter, there are 8 weeks until March 1st when the sun will be setting at 5:46 pm with dusk at 6:14 pm. On that day in 2016, we had rain and temperatures between 38 and 21 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 39 degrees. We hit a record high of 61 back in 1991.

Somehow after hiking Spruce Mountain or in the chaos over camping at East Branch, I managed to lose my headphones. I found another pair but they are not as comfortable as they are missing some of the padding. If I had known they were missing, I would have picked up another pair at Walmart yesterday. I generally just buy the most basic pair as I’m constantly breaking them as I use them a lot. 

New vacuum cleaner was working really well until it stopped working and was blowing dust everywhere. I almost disassembled all the easy parts before I found the blockage. I was vacuuming under the dresser and accidentally sucked in a 12 gauge shotgun shell which proceeded to plug up the pipe really well with dust bunnies and dirt. I’ve emptied out the tank three or four times nearly full of dirt and dust. Everything though carpet and dust wise is becoming cleaner in my apartment. It looks a lot nicer. I think the next step is to start moving furniture and start vacuuming under there. Might also try to polish up the tops of the desks and tables too.