November 26, 2020 Night

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Good evening! Foggy 🌁 and 49 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind. ️Temperatures will drop below freezing at Sunday around 4 am. ☃️

It was a nice Thanksgiving 🦃 with the family. Small little thing but it was nice to spend some time with them before the lock down. 🔒 The COVID numbers are looking bad all around but hopefully when the vaccine starts flowing in a couple of weeks the tied will be stemmed. Social distancing may help but it’s really hard to avoid all human contact even when working from home. Got home and did my evening walk 🚶🏻 and sat out back for a while.

Tonight will have patchy fog. Otherwise, mostly cloudy , with a low of 43 degrees at 2am. 15 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around October 7th. Light and variable wind. In 2019, we had light rain in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 31 degrees. The record low of 8 occurred back in 1957.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous 🌔 Moon with 90% illuminated. At 10 PM, the moon was in the south-southwest (195°) at an altitude of 54° from the horizon, some 252,209 miles away from where you are looking up from the earth. 🚀 At the state speed limit of 55 mph, you’ll make it there by June 6th. Buckle up for safety! 💺 The Blue 🌝 Moon is on Monday, November 30. The darkest hour is at 11:44 pm, followed by dawn at 6:30 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:02 am in the east-southeast (119°) and last for 3 minutes and 18 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 7:46 am with sun in the southeast (126°). Tonight will have 14 hours and 37 minutes of darkness, an increase of one minute and 39 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have patchy fog before 8am. Otherwise, partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 52 degrees at 1pm. Nine degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 6th. Northwest wind 3 to 6 mph. A year ago, we had light rain in the morning, which became light rain by afternoon. The high last year was 57 degrees. The record high of 66 was set in 1896. 4.8 inches of snow fell back in 1940.❄

Heading up to the Adirondacks tomorrow through Sunday. ⛺ Not totally sure yet where but I have a short list. I want to leave by around ten tomorrow and stop to buy some hot coca. ☕ Tomorrow doesn’t seem like a really nice sunny day so I’ll probably not rush up north. If I do any hiking up a mountain it will be on Sunday I think on my way home.

In four weeks on December 24 the sun will be setting in the west-southwest (238°) at 4:26 pm,🌄 which is 2 minutes later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had mostly sunny and temperatures between 42 and 25 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 33 and 18 degrees. The record high of 72 degrees was set back in 2015.

Looking ahead, 7:15 AM Sunrise ⌛️ is in 2 weeks, Christmas Eve 🎅 is in 4 weeks, Boxing Day 🥊 is a month away, New Years Eve 🎆 is in 5 weeks, Coldest Week of the Year 🌬 is in 7 weeks, 5:30 PM Dusk 🌆 is in 2 months, Wolf Moon 🌕 is in 9 weeks, Don’t Cry over Spilled Milk Day 🥛 is in 11 weeks and National Drink Wine Day 🍷 is in 12 weeks.

Pancakes on a rainy morning

WMS Mapping

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One thing I miss not having internet at home is not having access to web mapping services (WMS). These internet services are handy layers for mapping without downloading individual tiles for aerial photographs, hillshades or topographic maps. I particularly like WMS now that I found the Forest Service topographic WMS service and several state’s hillshades derived from 1m or 2m DEM.

They sure are handy to have access to.

Once Approved, Cuomo Says He’ll Be First for COVID Vaccine

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Once Approved, Cuomo Says He’ll Be First for COVID Vaccine

Governor Andrew Cuomo will be among the first to take a COVID-19 vaccine to show that it is safe, he said on Thursday in a conference call.

"I want people to feel confident, that's why I am willing to be one of the first ones to take the vaccine," Cuomo said in the call. “I would never ask the people of the state to take a vaccine that wasn’t safe."

Cuomo has previously said he is worried with the federal government speeding the approval of a vaccine for political purposes by the Trump administration and has pointed to polls showing similar concerns. But Cuomo on Thursday indicated he had more confidence with the vaccine now that Joe Biden's administration was taking over in the coming weeks.

Rebuilding a River Upstate, For the Love of a Tiny Mussel; Dam to Be Demolished to Save an Endangered Species – The New York Times

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Rebuilding a River Upstate, For the Love of a Tiny Mussel; Dam to Be Demolished to Save an Endangered Species – The New York Times

That got him to thinking. A few years ago he proposed something radical -- restoring the river to its natural state by removing the dam. This would give one of the most significant populations of dwarf wedgemussels in the world a little bit of elbow room -- that is if they had elbows, which they don't.

Gift Subscriptions to The Times, Cooking and Games. Starting at $25. While other states have torn down old dams for environmental reasons, New York, which has thousands of them, never has. But based on Mr. Schuler's observations, and a promise of logistical support by the Army Corps of Engineers, local officials here approved his plan, especially when told they would not have to pay a penny of the $1.8 million cost.

But breaking up the old dam, 107 feet long and 8 feet high, is only part of the project. Before it could come down, later this year, Mr. Schuler had to come up with detailed blueprints for restoring the riverbed.