Day: January 18, 2020💾

🖼️ Photos 📽️ Videos

Michigan’s 75-MPH Speed Limit Has Made Highways More Dangerous

Michigan’s 75-MPH Speed Limit Has Made Highways More Dangerous

Speed can still kill. That's the lesson Michigan is learning on the 600-plus miles of rural freeways where the speed limit was raised from 70 mph to 75 mph thanks to a 2017 law. With the number of drivers now going over 80 mph on the increase, more people are getting into crashes and losing their lives.

Bridge Media analyzed state police records and found that roads with the new 75-mph speed limit had, on average, more crashes and injuries in 2018 (the full first year for the new limits) compared to the entire road network. While the statewide average for crashes rose 3.4 percent in 2018 compared to the annual average from 2014-16 (remember, the speed limits went up part of the way through 2017), the average on the 75-mph roads went up 17.2 percent, Bridge Media found.

The real-world average speed increase on the 75-mph roads in one single-day test sample was just under 2 mph (from 74.6 mph in 2016 to 76.9 mph in 2018), but the total number of people going over 80 mph went from 10 percent to 40 percent of all cars. The result for some rural Michigan roads is that plenty of people are still driving well under 75 mph, but more are now going even faster.

Against Recycling

Against Recycling

Rather than corporations restricting their own production of disposable materials and eating into their profit, American consumers would now shame each other into managing industry’s cheap waste products. It was an insidious sleight of hand that reframed America’s growing waste problem as one not of corporate excess, but of irresponsible consumer choices and individual lifestyles.

SVGZ Graphic: States Ranked by Happiness
Map: Three Springs State Forest

January 18, 2020 Morning

Good morning! Happy Winnie the Pooh Day 🍯! Honey is good. I like it a lot on my waffles. Not sure if I’d want to be a bee 🐝 keeper but who knows. Bees are good pollinators. Next Saturday is 5 PM Sunset 🌆. Mostly cloudy and 10 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ Calm wind. Still pretty cold out. Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 8 am. 🌡️

Doesn’t look like a real nice morning, ☁ cloudy and cold. Meeting my parents for breakfast in Clarksville and then I’ll probably hike Bennett Hill, run to the grocery store and try to be home before the snow. ⛄ I thought about going up to Kehler Preserve on Wolf Hill but I’m not crazy about having to drive down the Letter S should the snow start early – there is a chance of snow as early as noon 🕛. At least it’s warm in my apartment as I turned the heat up last night with the cold weather coming in not wanting the hot water pipe to the shower 🚿 to freeze as happened during the 2009 ice storm black out. Gawd, I’ve lived in this rundown apartment a long time.

Today will snow, mainly after 3pm. The snow could be heavy at times. 🌨 High of 24 degrees at 4pm. Six degrees below normal. Calm wind becoming south 5 to 9 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 21 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible. A year ago, we had light snow. The high last year was 35 degrees. The record high of 59 was set in 1973. 7.9 inches of snow fell back in 1891.❄

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:06 pm with sun having an altitude of 26.8° from the due south horizon (-44.1° vs. 6/21). Definitely getting stronger, the nadir of winter is fading away. Thirty degrees elevation by noon by February 1st. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 4:07 pm with the sun in the southwest (235°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (242°) starting at 4:47 pm and lasts for 3 minutes and 17 seconds with dusk around 5:21 pm, which is one minute and 13 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:56 pm. At sunset, look for snow 🌨 and temperatures around 24 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 9 mph with gusts up to 21mph. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 30 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 48 seconds over today.

Tonight will snow, mainly before 11pm. The snow could be heavy at times. Temperature rising to around 32 by 3am. South wind 5 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible. In 2019, we had light snow in the evening, which stopped and became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 7 degrees. The record low of -28 occurred back in 1971.

🌹🌻🌼Only 61 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼

As previously noted, next Saturday is 5 PM Sunset 🌆 when the sun will be setting at 4:59 pm with dusk at 5:29 pm. On that day in 2019, we had partly sunny, snow showers and temperatures between 35 and 15 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 31 degrees. We hit a record high of 61 back in 1938.

Bash Bish Falls in Winter

Thematic Map: Percentage of Municipality Forested
Map: South Mountain State Forest