I grabbed this image and sent it to my brother @stevendbrewer, saying “I guess I don’t need to get to Yellowstone now.”
Then Winfield Village sent me this text:
UREGENT MESSAGE FROM ILLINOIS AMERICAN WATER A main water line into the property has broken and a boil order is in effect until 5:30 pm.
The Winfield Village finance committee (everyone here interested enough in the budget to show up) met last night. The subject of interest rates came up, and I was surprised to find it a near-unanimous opinion that rates were going to stay high at least through 2024.
Thinking of myself as a contrarian, I always worry just a bit when I agree with everyone, but I think they’re right.
I dragged the dog to the prairie (right next to Winfield Village), so I could get this picture of the dawn sky. (She had her own opinion of where we should go for our dawn walk, but did indulge me when I insisted.)
The pose in this picture reminded me of the famous Andrew Wyeth painting of the girl reclining in the grass facing a farmhouse. Here Ashley is reclining in the grass facing Winfield Village’s office and community room. #dogsofmastodon
Dawn is pretty early this time of year—too early for me to see the sunrise, but not too early for me to get this picture.
About one minute after I took this picture, the solar arrays started to turn to point east.
I got kinda ho-hum about rainbows when I lived in California, because they were so common. Back here in Illinois they’re more of a big deal—I probably see less than one a year, on average.
Prairie grass is growing like a weed where they did the burn a couple of weeks ago.
It’s not visible in the picture, but I saw a Yellow-shafted Flicker fly up ahead of me. They’re showy birds, always fun to see.
There’s a solar farm just north of Winfield Village, with ranks of solar arrays that turn from pointing east to pointing straight up to pointing west. (Oddly, they’re not arranged to point south. I assume the people who built it knew what they were doing, but I’ve been puzzling over it for a couple of years.)
The directions they point (and the timing of the changes) seem odd, and I’ve been trying to characterize the whole thing.
I initially assumed that they’d be programmed to point a particular direction based on ephemeris data about where the sun will be, but that seems not to be the case.
Here’s one piece of data: At dawn they do not turn to point east. Rather, they turn to point straight up:
It is only after the sun is well up that the panels turn to face east.
Last night, perhaps an hour before sunset, they were pointed about halfway between west and straight up. Which kind of makes sense, as there were clouds to the west, so they clear sky straight up was probably as bright as the sun behind the cloudy sky.
My current working theory is that the panels turn to face whatever direction produces the most power, regardless of where the sun is in the sky.
I’ll continue to watch, and try to characterize their behavior further.
Maybe I’ll even get in touch with the University and see if they can provide a link to a description!
For a couple of weeks the birds have been acting like it’s spring. Now the trees are getting in on the act.
Rainy, windy, and cold today. Even the dog doesn’t want to go out. But yesterday was rather nice and I got this picture of moss growing near the base of a tree. #mosstodon
