Thursday, February 3, 2022

Groundhog Day


Groundhog Day is supposed to be the day we get a sign of whether or not we are in for 6 more weeks of winter.  Funny thing is - today is our first real taste of winter for this year with below freezing temperatures that will last about 30 hours straight.  Got .13" of rain last night but it ended before it was cold enough to turn to snow.  After a small rise to the low 40's tomorrow afternoon, we are due to hit rock bottom for the year at around 20° Saturday morning - climbing to the low 50's by that afternoon.  Looks like we will be back in the 60's next week.  Pretty cloudy yesterday and today so I had to run my generator a little last night and this morning to give my batteries a bump.  The new power draw is the Starlink router pulling about 110 watts AC.  My old BBT router was only about 40 watts.  Starting to brighten up a bit this afternoon so I am back with a net gain from my solar panels.  15 tomato plants are resting comfortably in their protected zone in the greenhouse - kept from freezing (at around 45°) by the heat of my old propane grill on low.

So today is Groundhog Day.  The Field Lab bunny did not see his shadow this morning.  Take that to mean whatever you like... 


3 comments:

pamit said...

Bun does look a little irritated at the weather.

Jeff said...

My question for possibly Starlink would be can you shut off the router when not in use? (sleeping etc...) Maybe put router on timer.

John Wells said...

yes - I can shut the router off when not in use.