February 17, 2020 Night

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Good evening! Presidents Day Weekend is done. Next stop, Good Friday in April. Partly clear and 24 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌃 Calm breeze. Little chilly but it’s still February for a few more weeks. There is a inch of snow on the ground. ☃ Maybe more come the morning until it turns to rain? ️Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 11 am. 🌡️

It was a nice day up at Rensselaerville State Forest. 🎿 Don’t get out there much these days. Lots of shooting with an AR, not me, in the gravel pit and I passed by some trappers and a bush crafter who was camping in the back country but otherwise very quiet. It is kind of nice not that far away. I should camp up there some time too. That campsite number 2 looks quite nice and it officially designated a campsite. ⛺ Maybe Memorial Day Weekend? Just a thought.

Beautiful country out that way, I’d love to eventually live in a place like that 🐮 minus the gun 🔫 and open burning restrictions. 🔥 Plus I feel like the houses are a bit too close for comfort and I don’t want to have a place that is on a road with utility services. 🔌 Some parts of the Pennsylvania Wilds remind me of that. Going to places like Rensselaerville reminds me of how much great wild country there is out there. 🐻

Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 22 degrees at 1am. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 4th. Maximum wind chill around 24 at 10pm; Calm wind becoming southeast around 5 mph after midnight. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light snow by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 13 degrees. The record low of -21 occurred back in 1973.

Tonight will have a Waining Crescent 🌘 Moon with 27% illuminated. The Worm 🐛 Moon is on Wednesday, March 4. The darkest hour is at 12:10 am, followed by dawn at 6:22 am, and sun starting to rise at 6:51 am in the east-southeast (106°) and last for 3 minutes and 1 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 25 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 7:31 am with sun in the east-southeast (113°). Tonight will have 13 hours and 19 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 44 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will snow likely before noon, then rain and snow likely between noon and 1pm, then rain likely after 1pm. Cloudy 🌧, with a high of 40 degrees at 4pm. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 4th. Southeast wind 8 to 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. Probably just a lot of slop in the morning and then heavy rain come the afternoon. I need to get groceries and I want to wash my truck. 🚙 A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning, remaining cloudy in the afternoon. The high last year was 26 degrees. The record high of 63 was set in 1981. 6.3 inches of snow fell back in 2000.❄

In four weeks on March 16 the sun will be setting in the west (269°) at 7:03 pm (Daylight Savings Time),🌄 which is one hour, 34 minutes and 19 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had partly sunny, rain showers and temperatures between 46 and 31 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 44 and 26 degrees. The record high of 82 degrees was set back in 1990.

Looking ahead, Read Across America Day 📚 is in 2 weeks, Worm Moon 🌕 is in 3 weeks, St. Patrick’s Day 🍀 is a month away, Arbor Day 🌳 is in 10 weeks, 8 PM Sunset 🌇 is in 11 weeks, Pack Rat Day 🐀 is in 3 months, Flower Moon 🌕 is in 13 weeks, Memorial Day 🇺🇸 is in 14 weeks, June 🍹 is in 15 weeks and Average High is 80 🏖 is in 18 weeks.

🇺🇸🦅Only 94 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

Another View of Tower

Conscience, science reasons to close dump

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Ward Stone: Conscience, science reasons to close dump

I am writing about the Dunn construction debris dump adjacent to the Rensselaer City School District's buildings, which teach students from preschool through 12th grade. There is great potential for students and staff to be exposed to a wide variety of toxics. Some children will be exposed at school as well as home because they live within the contamination area of the dump site.

In my 41 years as wildlife pathologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, I studied numerous construction debris dumps. Construction debris contains a wide variety of toxics such as lead, mercury, cadmium, dioxins and a variety of organic chemicals that are poisonous, and many of which are carcinogenic to people and animals. Buildings that were burned and treated with pesticides as well as other chemicals become construction debris.

DEC releases final tweaks to plastic bag ban | News 4 Buffalo

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DEC releases final tweaks to plastic bag ban | News 4 Buffalo

After reviewing about 2,500 public comments received over 60 days, the Conservation Department proposed edits to the definitions of “exempt” and “reusable.” The Department deleted sections while clarifying and adding examples in others.

For example, they clarified that reusable bags must be cloth or another machine-washable material and removed a requirement that separate handles must be attached to a bag.

Abandoned Mines In PA That Pose An Extreme Health Or Safety Impact

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This data set portrays the approximate location of Abandoned Mine Land Problem Areas containing public health, safety, and public welfare problems created by past coal mining. It is a subset of data contained in the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) Abandoned Mine Land Inventory. This layer identifies AML Points representing specific locations within an AML Inventory Site, examples include AML discharge.

Data Source: PASDA. Abandoned Mine Land Inventory Points. Filtered by sites listed as posing an "Extreme Health or Safety Risk".

Feds Lower Coal Mine Cleanup Funding for Pennsylvania – The Allegheny Front

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Feds Lower Coal Mine Cleanup Funding for Pennsylvania – The Allegheny Front

Pennsylvania is receiving less money from the federal government this year to clean up its old abandoned mines.

The state is getting $32 million from the federal government’s Abandoned Mine Land (AML) reclamation grant this year, down from the $55 million it got last year. The drop is mostly because a one-time funding stream ended last year. That money came from funds originally withheld from states and American Indian tribes when the abandoned mine fund program was re-authorized in 2006.

Another factor is a decline in revenues the program receives from a per-ton fee on active coal mining. The money brought in by the fee — which is set to expire next year — has been dwindling as the country moves away from coal. The Energy Information Administration estimated that coal production declined another 9 percent last year, and expects another 14 percent decline this year.

There is something quite wonderful about poking around Rensselaerville

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There is something quite wonderful about poking around Rensselaerville… 🗻

When I was in college, I used to spend a lot of time poking around the back roads up here, taking in the vistas, the hills, the mountains and the farms. I’ve always liked the rural country with all its beauty, always been more than a little jealous of the folks that live out here. It really is God’s Country.