Cabin fever.....

 7:35 am - Thursday - January 30th - TWW - 22° F, humidity 87%, wind 4 mph out of the south by southeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 51° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I were visiting Manatee Springs near Cedar Key, FL.....

....it was very windy that day!  The view this morning......

....right at sunrise....it's going to be a beautiful sunny day!  Hope our snow melts quickly!

There has been snow on the ground at TWW since Sunday afternoon, and Wednesday was no different.  It had snowed overnight, and added about 1" of snow to what was left from Tuesday, so I had to go out and sweep the snow off of 18 solar panels once again.  While I was sweeping off the panels on the Eco-Worthy Dual Axis solar tracker the panels began to tilt toward the rising sun.....it was only 8:08 am.....a new record, and more evidence the sun is getting higher in the sky each day.  Sunset on Wednesday was at 5:58 pm....by Friday it will be setting at 6 pm....50 minutes later than a month ago.

The forecast for Wednesday was mostly cloudy.  In fact, the weather forecast showed 87% cloud cover, but we actually got sun for most of the morning, which is why I had to go out earlier than I was planning to clear snow off the solar panels.  Fortunately, we got enough sun to get all of our battery banks back to 100%.  Again, I was not expecting to get anything back to 100%.

While I was outside I took down the sail shade from the house deck since all it has been doing the last 5 days is catching snow, which is not a good thing.  I also cleared the snow off our Adirondack chairs, and the other chairs on the deck.  While I was at it I decided to climb the ladder to inspect the solar panels on the CONEX.  I had noticed when up there several weeks ago that several of the panels we not tilted at 45°, which is the optimal angle.  After checking the size of the bolts holding the tilt arms in place I climbed down the ladder and retrieved a couple of crescent wrenches from the CONEX and went back up to try to raise the one set of panels up to the optimal 45° angle.  It took about 15 minutes, but I got it done.  There are at least 2 other sets of panels which need to be tilted up to the 45° angle, but I decided it was just too cold, and wet, so I'll work on them another day when the sun is out, and it is in the 60's again, which is not really too far away.  In fact, by this weekend we'll have 60° F weather again for the next 4, or 5 days.

That was pretty much the extent of my work day, but at least I was outside for about an hour, which helped to alleviate the 'cabin fever' that is beginning to become an issue.  I'm an outdoor guy, and I need to be outside soaking up vitamin D, and doing something productive....lol!  This sitting inside for most of the day, every day, is not for the faint of heart.  On the other hand, we've made an appointment with Yavapai Bottle Gas to move our 120 gallon tank to the new site on Tuesday, February 4th, so there is going to be a lot of OUTDOOR activity around here over the next 5 days as we begin to move all the chess pieces around TWW chessboard so we can be ready to move the Newell Tuesday morning, after the propane tank is moved.

Thanks for stopping by!