I am kind of glad that my Facebook was vandalized … 🦨
It really gave me a kick in ass to get off social media, delete old accounts and replace them with much locked down accounts that follow far fewer people. Probably 2/3rds of the people I was friends on Facebook I hadn’t seen in years, and there just was so much obnoxious politics. I really don’t care that the President went to the bathroom or what he tweeted today.
With my new, semi-secret and secure accounts I can follow what I want and not be bombard with ads or content that I don’t really care about. I might occasionally post pictures from camping trip on Facebook, but I don’t expect to post much on there, and none of the silly things or witty remarks I used so frequently place on there.
The polar vortex is a large area of low pressure and cold air surrounding both of the Earth’s poles. It ALWAYS exists near the poles, but weakens in summer and strengthens in winter. The term "vortex" refers to the counter-clockwise flow of air that helps keep the colder air near the Poles. Many times during winter in the northern hemisphere, the polar vortex will expand, sending cold air southward with the jet stream (see graphic above). This occurs fairly regularly during wintertime and is often associated with large outbreaks of Arctic air in the United States. The one that occurred January 2014 is similar to many other cold outbreaks that have occurred in the past, including several notable colder outbreaks in 1977, 1982, 1985 and 1989.
Rising temperatures in the North Pole are causing parts of the polar vortex to split off and move southward, leading to the possibility of a particularly harsh winter in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
The polar vortex, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines as "a large area of low pressure and cold air surrounding the Earth's North and South poles," generally remains strong and stable, as it did last winter.
As reported by The Washington Post, when it remains stable, cold air stays within the area over the Arctic, with snow chances much less in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions.
If you are having problems with pages loading properly on the blog, I suggest you do a quick click of the reload button with the shift button held down. I just renamed and removed references to “Google Maps” on the blog in favor of “Interactive Maps” as this blog no longer uses Google Map Technology to display maps, in favor of the open source, and much more powerful leafletjs, combined with publicly available tile and web map services from government and not-for-profits.
Good morning! Happy National Bird Day 🐧 ! Bird’s the word. I know with this pandemic, 👾 I have been doing a lot more bird watching from my truck working off the Wi-Fi 📶 at the library parking lot. Those binoculars really bring in the birds up close, and when your looking out a windshield for 8 hours a day, you see a lot of nature. 🐿 Next Tuesday is Coldest Day Recorded in Albany 💨 . I don’t think this year next week will be nearly as cold. Cloudy and 31 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁ Calm wind. There are 3 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at around 10 am. 🌡️ Melty melt. Kind of like that discarded empty coffee container from the other day. ☕🔥 Redneck recycling, it’s all BTUs in outdoor woodboiler. ♻ Never mind, rednecks don’t tell. 😶 LOL.
Heading out for my morning walk shortly.🚶 I was so bad and didn’t get for my evening walk. I was going to go, but then I got playing with Leaflet Javascript mapping script. I figured out how to get the traditional topographic maps and the digital orthophoto quadrangles from the mid-1990s loaded into the system, so I can easily create interactive comparisons for the blog. 🗺 I was excited as a pig in shit about that, because I like neat, easy to create content that informs people about how our world is changing.🌎 Remote sensing, computers and GIS makes it easier to monitor the shit storm we know is happening on the earth. 😯 This morning is cloudy and shit but I better walk or I’ll get even fatter and die of a stroke.
Listening to Bob Dylan’s Lay, Lady Lay. 🎸 I fixed it so it now plays on my smartphone, because it wasn’t in MP3 format. Good song, and I love the Erick Landy photo of Bob Dylan on the cover Nashville Skyline, which makes Mr. Dylan look like the country boy he really is or at least pretends to be in the year of 1967 when country-folk music was very popular. Kind of melty theme. 🍦 That and the Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo. I just like it when fairly hip rock-and-rollers play country music with a bit of an ironic twist. 👨🏻🌾
Today will be cloudy ☁, with a high of 35 degrees at 1pm. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 15th. Calm wind becoming north around 6 mph in the afternoon. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 37 degrees. The record high of 64 was set in 1950. 8 inches of snow fell back in 1891.❄
I am planning on going to the store mid-day today, 🛍 and then maybe wash my truck. 🚿 Then down to the library for the afternoon work session and to get more podcasts until I feel super cold and I have to come home and sit next to the electric heater. I want to install that ERIC IDE to see if that will help me with my Python coding, which I promise myself I am going to get even better at and use more python to write system scripts and the alike, rather then PHP which really isn’t well suited for that job but I often use for that purpose.💻
I finally got my replacement driver’s license in the mail ✉. I will need to get an eye test 👀 before the end of the year but I should probably visit the eye doctor this summer as it’s been a few years since I last got my eyes checked. While my insurance covers yearly contact exams now, I hate dealing with eye doctors, they’re the worst.
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:02 pm with sun having an altitude of 24.8° from the due south horizon (-46° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:52 pm with the sun in the southwest (232°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (240°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:37 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 22 seconds with dusk around 5:08 pm, which is 58 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:44 pm. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ and temperatures around 34 degrees. There will be a north breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 11 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 2 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 25 degrees at 5am. 10 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 14th. North wind 3 to 6 mph. In 2020, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 26 degrees. The record low of -19 occurred back in 1996.
Did you see that they added the fondue emoji 🫕 in 2020? Maybe not so cool to be sharing a pot of food in the year of the pandemic, 👾 but who doesn’t like fondue, with good melted cheese 🧀 and cheap wine 🍾 and flour. I think we have a melting theme going on this morning. It’s because it’s fairly warm this morning, and in the distance I can just see spring. 🐷 I know spring is a time of hick towns that smell like cow poop and mud 💩 but also it means longer days, trout season 🎣 and less snow to deal with. And eventually things start to dry out and the swarms of black flies return to terrorize the woods. 🐜 Trust me, I know how the cycle works in Upstate NY. Three days of nice weather, 8 months of frigid cold, then cow shit, mud and black flies. 🐄 But no cows, no cheese for fondue. And that would be sad.
A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 31. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 32. Typical average high for the weekend is 30 degrees.
If it wasn’t a two day weekend, 😫 I would definitely head up to the Adirondacks. Plus I was just up there last weekend. But maybe we will have another weekend in January that isn’t super
As previously noted, two Tuesdays until the Coldest Day Recorded in Albany 💨 when the sun will be setting at 4:44 pm with dusk at 5:15 pm. On that day in 2020, we had mostly cloudy, warm weather rain showers and temperatures between 67 and 31 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 30 degrees. We hit a record high of 63 back in 2018. But back in 1972, it was a block-freezing negative 28 in the city of Albany. But it never gets that cold anymore, or so I’ll claim.
🌹🌻🌼Only 74 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼
