November 19, 2018 Night

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Good evening! Light snow and 33 degrees in Delmar. ❄ Calm wind.There is around 2 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Temperatures will drop below freezing at tomorrow around 1 am. ☃️

Tonight will snow. 🌨 Low of 31 degrees at 4am. Typical for tonight. It really has to get a bit cooler before the snow will accumulate. Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 80%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies, clearing in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 30 degrees. The record low of 6 occurred back in 1986.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous Moon 🌔 with 89% illuminated. The moon will set at 3:39 am. The Beaver Moon🌕 is on Thursday night with a slight chance of snow showers and breezy. The sun will rise at 6:52 am with the first light at 6:22 am, which is one minute and 13 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 14 hours and 24 minutes of darkness, an increase of one minute and 58 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will snow likely before noon, then a chance of rain showers. Cloudy 🌦, with a high of 39 degrees at 3pm. Seven degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical day around December 6th. Northwest wind 5 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 42 degrees. The record high of 72 was set in 1991. 3.4 inches of snow fell back in 1961.❄

Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. 😕 Saturday, a chance of rain after 1pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 39. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Sunday, a chance of rain. Cloudy, with a high near 41. Chance of precipitation is 50%. Typical average high for the weekend is 44 degrees.

Kind of a busy day with a lot of different things going on. I was hoping to get to Cynthia Poolers fundraiser for the Reszin Adams documentary but I got stuck with work and it would have been pretty late by the time🎬 I got there, and it was all the way up in Colonie. Maybe I can mail a check. I probably should have gone.

This evening I continued to work on several electronics projects, including upgrading my VMS ticker display to a lolin32 board from an Arduino. The extra memory means I’m not always so crushed for space,📱 I can do some graphics now and eventually will add updates via Bluetooth. The computing power, low energy consumption and low cost of the small development boards is nothing short of amazing. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that everybody still used mechanical devices like cam timers. 🔗

I also started to work on a new reading lamp / light for over my bed to make getting up on dark winter mornings easier. The blue light from the colored strips helped that I built last winter but they have poor color rendition so I adding a warm white strip over my bed. I do need to get another 12 volt power supply, I’m going to order that next week.:idea: The idea is it will eventually talk to the other strip using Bluetooth. Just because I don’t have internet at home, doesn’t mean I can’t build nice low power, smart devices that can make my life better.

Many of the devices I’m building aren’t perfect, but I am learning a lot about electricity, microprocessors, and communication buses. 🔬 It’s useful knowledge that I can use going forward.

In four weeks on December 17 the sun will be setting at 4:23 pm,🌄 which is 5 minutes and 33 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2017 on that day, we had partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 27 and 8 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 35 and 21 degrees. The record high of 59 degrees was set back in 1984.

Looking ahead, Cyber Monday 🛍️ is in 1 weeks, New Years Eve 🎆 is in 6 weeks, Martin Luther King Day 🖤 is in 9 weeks, Average High is 40 ☀️ is in 15 weeks, Daylight Savings Time 🌆 is in 16 weeks and Last Sunset After 8:30 PM 🌆 is in 34 weeks. That’s a ways out.

Cold Afternoon on Mary Smith Hill

Banning Plastic Bags

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I like the idea of banning plastic shopping bags but I am opposed to taxing or discouraging the use of paper bags as an alternative.

Plastic shopping bags really have three strikes against them. The first is litter. They sometimes blow out car windows, out garbage trucks and landfills. The second is they don’t really break down outside of combustion. Rotting and solar degradation isn’t enough to break down large chains of polymers without burning. Fire is a natural part of many landscapes but much of our world today is fire suppressed due to the risk to property and concerns about pollution. The third thing against plastic is they are made out of a non-renewable resource. Unlike trees you can’t just plant another oil well.

A better option is using paper bags. Not taxing them but actively encouraging their use. Paper bags are a renewable resource made from an often organic crop. They subject carbon out of the air. Timber production helps support healthy forests, good jobs, recycling of paper, and helps keep recreational lands for hunting, fishing, camping and leads to protection of clean water. Even when paper bags become litter they will quickly biodegrade. Paper bags are recyclable at the curb side, can be used as kindling for starting woodstoves, have many uses around the house.

Cloth bags are fine but in my experience they quickly become dirty and wear out. I often forget where I put mine and they’re not convenient when shopping. I often use plastic bags at the store but would be more than happy to use paper bags if they were available – one less thing to have to remember to bring back to the store for recycling.

I understand that paper bags are somewhat more expensive to manufacture then plastic. It’s more complicated to manage forests properly or to collect and recycle paper than it is to make thin plastic bags from ethylene, a byproduct of natural gas production. But most retailers used to offer paper bags as part of the normal cost of doing business, so I see no reason not to go back to them.

Above the Canyon