Cloudy, rainy, and chilly.
My Internet reception at Pete's has been marginal at best, and on this trip it comes and goes even more often. This makes publishing my blog difficult, to say the least, but worse, this chilly, breezy, cloud-filled-sky weather makes doing anything outside much less fun, and current predictions show the sun won't come out until Thursday morning. That kind of weather makes me spend a lot of time playing on the computer, which is okay as long as it doesn't involve being on the Internet.
But this is what I expected, so I wasn't surprised, and it's giving me a good look at how my system is working: having my normally AC electric stuff powered directly off my 12-volt lithium-iron batteries, which is one of the ways I'm hoping to save electricity, so if the predictions for very cloudy, rainy weather in Arizona this winter come true, I'll be able to deal with it comfortably and without the stress of last winter's cloudy weather in Arizona.
Actually, for my purposes, I couldn't have picked a better time to come out to Pete's. Some of the trees are changing and look really pretty, which I like, but mostly I've been concerned about this whole El Niño thing going on in Arizona and how it's going to affect my boondocking, and right now at Pete's I'm looking at what is predicted to be three days straight of totally socked-in clouds, and an 80% chance of rain for two of those days; I call that a perfect test of my new battery system.
I know I can last three days running just off the batteries; that's not even in question, but I want enough solar panels to keep my batteries mostly charged, even when it's cloudy. Last winter in Arizona, I went through a very cloudy spell that almost caused me to run out of electricity, so I ordered 400 watts of deployable solar panels through Home Depot. But after that, the weather cleared up, and I never had that kind of cloud cover again, so I don't know if that actually saved me; being at Pete's for a week will hopefully answer that question..... or maybe that's simply too much to ask for from such a tiny home.
Theboondork
Just a couple of pics of the Fall colors at Pete's.
A rare, pretty sunrise at Pete's.
When you wake up to a sky like this, you know you're in for a rainy day.