Albany normally has 3.61 inches of rain during the month of May. This year, as of May 21st, there have been 3.73 inches of rain. They are expecting another 8/10th of inch of rain during this week. But we are long ways from 1953, when we had 8.91 inches of rain during the month of May.
By 2020, every Chinese coal plant will be more efficient than every US coal plant
"The result is a report — authored by Melanie Hart, Luke Bassett, and Blaine Johnson — that offers the clearest picture yet of the big picture on coal in China. And a closer look, it turns out, utterly destroys the conservative argument. Far from sitting back and coasting while the US acts, China is waging an aggressive, multi-front campaign to clean up coal before eventually phasing it out — reducing emissions from existing plants, mothballing older plants, and raising standards for new plants. Unlike the US, it is on track to exceed its Paris carbon reduction commitments."
Why Radar Detectors Matter More Than Ever
"DeMuro thought his detector would thwart any potential speeding tickets? Condoms break sometimes. Does that mean no one should use them? Hey Doug, what do you think will happen if no one uses detectors anymore? I’ll tell you. A large minority of Waze-tagged speed traps will disappear. Why? Because the cop hiding behind a bridge can’t be tagged by Wazers who aren’t looking for him. A detector may be the only warning of their presence. Power detector users — the ones using Waze at the same time — are therefore Wazers’ best allies."
May 22, 2017 9 AM Update
A rather wet but not currently raining morning. 54 degrees now, looking at 61 later in the city. Possibly more rain later but gosh I brought my umbrella so that is almost a perfect guarantee of no rain today. This is going to be a fairly wet week, leaving maybe an inch of rain bar tomorrow. Then hopefully nice weather for the Memorial Day Weekend.
Last night was nice sleeping in the truck. It sounded like we got some rain during the middle of the night and the wind howled around a bit but not really cold or damp.
The sun will set at 8:18 pm with dusk around 8:51 pm, which is 57 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for rain and temperatures around 55 degrees. The dew point will be 52 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 52 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 44 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will have a chance of showers, mainly before 11pm. Patchy fog between 11pm and 2am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low of 48 degrees at 6am. One degrees below normal. South wind 5 to 7 mph becoming light and variable in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2016, it got down to 51 degrees with shallow fog. The record low of 36 occurred back in 1967.
As previously noted, next Monday is Memorial Day when the sun will be setting at 8:24 pm with dusk at 8:58 pm. On that day in 2016, we had an afternoon thunderstorm with rain, but otherwise mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 89 and 68 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 73 degrees. We hit a record high of 93 back in 1931.
This weekend after the Lupine Festival while I was out hiking I left my laptop plugged in to inverter charging. Worked fine for a while and the low voltage disconnect did its job, dropping the load eventually to protect the battery from damage. That said I’m looking to get a 12 volt car charger for my laptop, as a simple boost converter to charge the laptop would use a fair bit less power. Inverters are fine but they aren’t that efficient especially at the higher amperage demands and low power factor of the laptop, with a system with limited storage. And it looks like they are only like $25. I’ll look more at it before summer vacation when I will be using my laptop off the trucks power.