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Weather at the Frozen North
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Last Updated: Mar 11, 2008 05:06 PM
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Tue - March 11, 2008 05:05 PM50! *Spring is finally here--after months of
nearly-continuous days below freezing, the temperature shot up to 50 degrees
today. Thank the intense sunlight (we're now getting as much sun each day as we
did at the end of September) and favorable westerly winds.
To be precise, our home weather station recorded
a high of 49.7, which while it isn't precisely 50, it is close enough if you
round to the nearest degree. Hence the
asterisk.
When it's 50 outside and bright sunshine, the house stays at a comfortable temperature all by itself: I let the stove go out, despite the fact that I'm home this afternoon (with a cold). I can practically see the snow disappearing before my eyes, and the highs are forecast to stay above 40 for pretty much the rest of the week. By this weekend, the snow cover which has persisted since early December may be completely gone. I love all the seasons in Minnesota, but Spring is easily my favorite, followed closely by Fall. I love those moments when we pass through Perfect while going from one extreme to the other. Posted at 05:05 PM | Permalink | | Sun - February 3, 2008 11:29 AMReally Frozen North2007-2008 is the first Real Winter(tm) we've
gotten in the Frozen North in a few years. A reasonable amount of snow, subzero
temperatures, the whole nine yards.
Plus a new feature this year: the Temperature
Roller Coaster. Most years, when we go into the deep freeze, we get a week or
maybe ten days of consistently subzero temperatures, barely struggling into
positive territory in the mid-afternoon if at all. This time around, we're
getting short little bursts of bitterly cold temperature, followed by a warmup a
day or two later, and then another plunge a few days to a week or two after
that.
This week was especially remarkable, as shown in the graph:  Over a 36-hour period, we went from +45 degrees to -15 degrees, a 60-degree swing. In the temperature plot you can almost see the exact minute the arctic cold front passed our house. The weather service likes to measure these things in nice 24-hour chunks, and on that basis this was apparently the biggest drop in decades. It was a little surreal to be walking around outside with no jacket on Monday, then all bundled up and worried about the car starting on Tuesday. Welcome to Minnesota. This week, they're forecasting a snowstorm on Monday, and more moderate temperatures (nothing below zero). We're past the midpoint of winter, there's noticeably more daylight now than back in late December, and it will get harder and harder for those arctic airmasses to compete against the warmer air coming from the Gulf of Mexico. We've also now completely consumed the five cords or so of firewood I'd stockpiled in the garage, so I'm now starting to move wood in from the outside piles. The wood in the garage lasted until February, almost exactly as long as I'd predicted. The supply is looking good, though I'm spending a fair amount of time picking through the piles to find the best wood to burn while it's still relatively cold out. The lighter wood (mostly cottonwood) is best for burning in the spring, when we don't need to keep the stove going all the time. It just burns too fast for the middle of winter. The biggest problem is that I've still got something like eight cords of cottonwood, most of it in large unsplit pieces. That's almost half a season's worth of wood, which is good, but there's so much of it that I'll be spending a lot of time splitting, stacking, and moving it. On the other hand, it was all free. Beggars can't be choosers. Posted at 11:29 AM | Permalink | | Wed - December 26, 2007 12:38 PMNew Weather PageI've had some annoyances with the old software I
was using to upload the current weather to Weather Underground, so I've switched
to a different software package and a new weather page right here on the
blog.
The current weather at the Frozen North is here. The page will update every five minutes,
and I'm going to add some history graphs when I get the chance. One benefit of
the new page is that I can now display the temperature and humidity inside the
house, which Weather Underground wouldn't
support.
I'm still trying to find a fix for one significant bug, that the USB driver for the interface to the weather station crashes with some regularity. The symptom on the weather page is that the current conditions are all blank, and fixing it requires either unplugging the USB cord to the weather station, or rebooting the computer. For now, I've got the computer set to reboot overnight, but I'd really like to find a more permanent fix. If anyone knows about fixing a flaky Silicon Labs USB driver on Mac OS X, let me know. I've already done the obvious stuff like making sure I have the most current drivers, and I'm not the only person to report the problem. Posted at 12:38 PM | Permalink | | Sat - September 22, 2007 03:08 PMCool new featureThose reading this in a web browser (as opposed
to in an RSS reader) will notice a cool new feature in the left hand column: a
real-time display of the current weather conditions at Frozen North
HQ.
There's also a page with more detailed weather
conditions.
This is data uploaded in real time from my new home weather station, with the display provided courtesy of Weather Underground. So if you ever want to know just how frozen it is at the Frozen North, now you know. Posted at 03:08 PM | Permalink | | 02:57 PMSun - September 2, 2007 02:39 PMHome Weather StationI freely admit to being a weather geek. Six years
ago, on a whim, I purchased an Oregon Scientific home weather station and
installed it on my roof. This is a set of three wireless sensors
(temperature/humidity, rain gauge, and anemometer [aka wind measuring gizmo]).
The outside sensors transmit their measurements to an indoor base station where
you can view the current conditions on a backlit LCD screen.
Aside from enabling meteorological geeking out
("Wow, I can't believe the dewpoint hit 78 degrees!"), this is largely useless.
But it's cool, and I've really enjoyed having it. After some time, She Who Puts
Up With Me grudgingly admitted that it's nice to be able to tell just how
hot/cold/humid/windy/wet it is without having to go
outside.
Unfortunately, the Oregon Scientific weather station was pretty much a piece of junk. The weatherproof seals on the solar-powered transmitters weren't, and the anemometer failed completely within a few months of the time I installed it. The anemometer was never very accurate to begin with, thanks to my poor siting and installation, so I didn't mind too much. A few weeks ago, the rain gauge failed, leaving just the temperature/humidity sensor. It was time to get a new weather station. This time, I did some research. Knowing that I actually use the weather station on a daily basis, it was worth spending the time and money to get a good quality replacement and installing it properly. I settled on the Davis Vantage Pro2 wireless weather station. It's more expensive than the Oregon Scientific model, but boasts a number of advantages: a higher quality sensor suite, all the sensors integrated into a single unit, a more precise rain gauge (measuring in increments of 0.01", rather than 1mm), better console displays, and--perhaps most importantly--consistently raving comments online about the company's support for its products.
Installation I mounted the old sensor suite on a TV antenna pole on the roof above our great room (see photo). There were a number of problems with this mounting: the anemometer was actually below the highest point on our roof, leading to errors with the wind speed and direction; the pole was not exactly vertical, so the rain gauge was probably slightly off; the temperature sensor was unshielded, and (despite my best efforts) was in the sun in the early mornings and late evenings. I also don't like climbing on the roof, so maintenance was a chore and rarely happened. It made things worse that the Oregon Scientific setup had three separate sensors, which meant a lot of complexity in trying to get all three onto the same pole. In retrospect it might have made more sense to locate each sensor in a different place around the house, but I didn't think of that at the time. In contrast, the new Davis unit has all the sensors in a single package (though the anemometer can be mounted separately), which makes it easy to attach to a pole. Rather than a rooftop mount, I decided to put the sensors on a 30-foot pole attached to the side of the house, with the base of the pole on a balcony. This is high enough to get the sensors several feet above the highest point on the roof. My first attempt at mounting the sensors was with 1.25" galvanized pipe. This turned out to be much too heavy: close to 100 lbs of pole for a six pound package at the top. It was so heavy that we couldn't easily raise it within the limited confines of the balcony. The next attempt was with PVC pipe, but while the PVC was much lighter (only a few pounds for the whole 30'), it was much too flexible: the pipe would bend completely double rather than lift the six pound sensor package off the ground. Even stabilized with guy wires, the pipe would likely buckle under any sort of load. I considered going with a larger size PVC pipe (maybe 4" PVC for all but the top foot or so), but in the end, I settled on 1 3/8" fence pole. This is the stuff which is used for the horizontal rail on chain link fence, and it's relatively stiff (being made of galvanized steel), but not nearly as heavy as the pressure pipe. Even better, the sections slip together rather than being screwed or glued, meaning that the pole could be assembled as it went up rather than put together on the ground and hoisted in one piece. I raised the pole by starting with the top section in a nearly vertical position, resting against a stepladder. I slid it up high enough to slip the next section in at the bottom (keep in mind I was on a balcony, so I only had to raise it a couple feet above the balcony floor to get the next section of pole on the bottom), then repeated until the pole was completely assembled and leaning against the roof of the house with the base sitting on the balcony. Then, with She Who Puts Up With Me hanging onto a guy wire to keep it from toppling backwards, I gingerly raised the pole to vertical, slipped the base into a socket screwed to the balcony deck, and clamped it to the side of the house. The guy wires were anchored to the side of the house to keep the pole from swaying too much even in strong winds. No going on the roof required. Usage So far the Davis weather station has been head and shoulders above the old Oregon Scientific model. In addition to the basic weather displays, it can graph any piece of data over the past 24 hours, 24 days, 24 months, or 24 years. The rain gauge is much faster and more accurate than the old one, and the console will display cute messages during certain conditions (for example, "It's raining cats and dogs!" during heavy rain). There's also a set of diagnostic screens available, which are useful for troubleshooting the wireless connection (the Oregon Scientific weather station lacked any diagnostics at all), and a nice storm total feature in the rain gauge which tracks the cumulative rainfall for any rain event. I only have a couple of minor quibbles: the console won't calculate the indoor dewpoint (which is sometimes nice to know), and leaving the backlight on for too long will raise the reported indoor temperature since the indoor sensor is located inside the console (one nice feature of the Oregon Scientific unit was the remote sensor for indoor temperature, so I could place that where it was most useful). I've ordered the hardware and software for capturing the data on my home computer, which will increase the geek-out factor even more. So color me a satisfied customer. This is one of the better toys out there. Posted at 02:39 PM | Permalink | | Sat - December 30, 2006 07:45 PMWacky DecemberDecember 30th, and it's 40 degrees out and
raining.
This isn't the Frozen North any more. This is, I
dunno, the Unfrozen North. The weather is more like what we'd expect to see in
March than the end of December.
As nice as it is for our heating bills, this unusual weather could cause some problems. Lakes, for example, probably aren't safe to be on right now, but you still see the usual set of diehards setting up their ice fishing houses. I wouldn't be surprised if some plants respond to the warm weather by trying to push up new shoots. They'll be in a bad way if (as is inevitable) we see a deep-freeze cold snap before spring. Normally at this time of year we're entering the coldest part of winter. Instead, it's been highs above freezing for weeks on end. (Meanwhile, Denver, hundreds of miles south of us, has gotten several feet of snow. The same storms have been bringing us--you guessed it--rain.) Is this a sign of global warming? I don't know, but it's surely not what I expected from Minnesota. Posted at 07:45 PM | Permalink | | Sun - December 3, 2006 10:26 AMDecember ChillWe almost made it to December without turning on
the furnace in our house. But on November 30th, the seasons finally caught up
with us, and we have been having consistent lows in the singe digits and highs
below freezing since.
That's more than our wood stove can keep up with,
unless someone was here to keep it running full-blast 24/7. Thanks, but I'm not
going to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the
fire.
We're managing to keep quite comfortable with relatively minimal furnace use. I've been keeping the stove running as long as as hot as practical, and also turning up the heat in our TV room, which also keeps the kitchen warm. We close the doors to the kitchen, and have a warm haven in those two rooms. That's practical in our house because the TV room was an addition on to the house and has a separate furnace. Keeping those two rooms warm means running the furnace a whole lot less than keeping the whole house warm, and enough heat leaks into the main house to let the wood heat eventually catch up during the daytime. Posted at 10:26 AM | Permalink | | Thu - November 23, 2006 08:27 AMThanksgiving WeatherWe've had a remarkable run of mild weather for
the past couple weeks: highs in the 50's, lows just below freezing, and no
precipitation. That's 15-20 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year,
and we're enjoying it.
The lack of rain, though, is a problem. The pond
behind our house hit the "gosh, the pond is low" level a couple weeks ago, and
we're now approaching "I sure hope we get some rain soon." The pond is a
hydrological dead end, as there's no outlfow. Water collects in rainstorms, and
gradually soaks into the ground below. That means that the water level can vary
a lot depending on the rainfall we get, and one good soaker of a storm could
refill it back to almost-normal
levels.
That said, there's no significant precipitation anywhere in the forecast (just a slight chance of drizzle this weekend). I don't know how deep the pond is, but that may be a question we'll be contemplating soon. The positive side of this warm spell is that it looks very likely that I'll achieve my goal of not turning on the furnace in our house before December. So far we've been on 100% wood heat, and quite cozy. Posted at 08:27 AM | Permalink | | Wed - October 11, 2006 02:18 PMWinter Storm a Damp SquibFeh.
For all the build-up, all we got was a little
wind, a bit of rain, and a lot of
cold.
C'mon, guys, all I want is three or four feet of the white stuff. Is that too much to ask? Posted at 02:18 PM | Permalink | | Tue - October 10, 2006 10:46 AMWinter ArrivesWinter is arriving in force this week. Today
will be a nice autumn day--highs in the 50's and sunny--but tonight the weather
gets, um, interesting.
Showers overnight with a low in the mid-30's.
Tomorrow will have snow and a
high
in the mid-30's, and the forecast calls for three nights in a row of
below-freezing temperatures.
Average for this time of year is lows in the mid-40's and highs in the mid-60's, so its going to be about 20 degrees colder than usual. Needless to say, I'm expecting to run the wood stove pretty much flat out for the next couple days. I've been firing up the stove occasionally for about a month now, depending on the weather, and burned about a half-cord of the lower-grade firewood (cottonwood, pine, and some old and party rotten buckthorn a neighbor brought over). Fall and spring is a good time to use up this wood, since even though it doesn't burn very long, it does light easily and burn hot. Strangely enough, I actually have quite a bit more firewood right now than I had a month ago. Not only do I have about two cords of elm I picked up from the diseased tree over the past month, I've also had neighbors dropping wood in my driveway. Some of it is quite green (including a freshly cut down cottonwood tree), but even the green stuff will be a nice jump-start on stockpiling wood for the next winter. The elm, though, is already drying nicely, and is high-quality firewood. It'll be usable this season if I need it, though I expect I'll have enough with wood cut this past spring. Posted at 10:46 AM | Permalink | | Fri - September 8, 2006 09:06 PMFrost?Tonight the northern third of Minnesota is likely
to see the first frost for the season. In the Twin Cities we'll get down to the
mid 40's. It isn't forecast to get back up to 70 until at least Tuesday....fall
is definitely coming.
This first frost is one to two weeks earlier than
normal this year. The northern part of the state, on average, gets its first
frost around the third week of September, and the twin cities area usually gets
frost right around the end of the
month.
In Minneapolis we don't have frost in our immediate forecast....yet. But it will be chilly enough tonight to close all the windows and fire up the wood stove "for real" for the first time this season. We might not actually need the stove, but it won't hurt to take the chill off. Posted at 09:06 PM | Permalink | | Mon - July 31, 2006 07:25 PMHeatIt's official: this has been the hottest weather
in the Twin Cities in 11 years. We topped a hundred degrees today, and with the
dewpoint in the 70's, it has been miserable. Worse, we've had a full week of
this weather, and as the house heats up day after day it gets harder to keep it
cool.
I've been trying to minimize our cooling costs by
running the air conditioning as little as possible during the day, and turning
it off when nobody's home. I've found, though, that the A/C needs to run a
minimum number of hours each day just to remove the excess humidity--even if the
temperature is comfortable, the moisture may not
be.
The contrary is true, too. The temperature may be warm, but if the humidity is low enough we can tolerate it. In practice, that means I've been gradually setting the thermostat warmer and warmer throughout the heat wave, since the humidity drops faster than the temperature. At the beginning of the heat wave, I set it to 72 degrees overnight when the house was 78 in the afternoon when we got home from work. Tonight, when we got home, the house was 87 degrees with a dewpoint of 66. I set the thermostat to 80, figuring that by the time the air is cooled to that point, the dewpoint will be down to 50 or so, and it will be reasonably comfortable. What I really want is a thermostat which can be set for dewpoint instead of temperature. In the summer, keeping the dewpoint below 55 degrees is more important for comfort than keeping the temperature below 80. The good news is that tonight should be the last night of the heat wave. The weather forecast calls for a low of 75 tonight and a 50% chance of thunderstorms, and a high of only 81 for tomorrow. After that, it's highs in the low 80's as far out as the forecast goes. As soon as the rain blows through, we'll be turning off the A/C, opening all the windows, and taking advantage of those wonderful nighttime temperatures in the low 60's. As heat-soaked as the house is, it might take a day or two to really cool off, but it will all be free, courtesy of Mother Nature. Considering that the average hottest week of the summer is in mid-July, it is quite possible that we might not see 90 degrees again this year. On that happy note, I'll add that we're only six weeks or so away from the time to fire up the wood stove to stave off the chill of early autumn. Posted at 07:25 PM | Permalink | | Sat - July 15, 2006 10:37 AMChill.Last summer was unusually comfortable, with only
a short, mild bout of hot weather. Not so this year. This week alone will have
more 90-degree days than all of last summer, and the forecast for today calls
for a high of 99 degrees. I guess they just couldn't bring themselves to
forecast the magic 100.
Combine the hot weather with a month of almost no
rain, plus gusty winds, and you have a recipe for wildfire. Wildfire isn't as
much of a problem in Minnesota as it is in, say, Wyoming or California, but it
does happen. The northern two-thirds of the state is listed as "very high" fire
danger for today, and a "red flag" warning is posted for the northwest part of
the state. A "red flag" warning means that critical wildfire conditions are
expected. Frankly, I wouldn't be too surprised to see some of the
(non-sprinkled) lawns in our neighborhood go up in smoke this week. Lawns are
just that dry.
Meanwhile, the issue in our household is how to stay cool without breaking the bank, and without being too environmentally unfriendly. During the workweek it's easy: we just turn the air conditioning off during the day when nobody's home. A few years ago we installed insulated glass windows in our house, which have made a big difference in the cooling costs, since we have a lot of big South-facing windows. Even on the hottest days, the house takes a long time to heat up unless we do something dumb (like bake cookies). So I've been following the strategy of turning the thermostat down to 72 degrees overnight (cooling the house when it's easier because there's no sunlight and the outside air is cooler), and then turning the air conditioning up to 78 or 80 during the daytime (today I might let it get even warmer, since even at 85 degrees it will still feel cool inside). If we're not home, we turn the air conditioning off completely. With this plan, the air conditioning usually doesn't click on at all until very late in the afternoon, after 5 PM, and after the peak of the air conditioning day has passed. So we aren't contributing to overloading the electric grid by trying to cool the house at the same time everyone else is doing the same, and the air conditioner isn't trying to work uphill against the hottest of the afternoon heat. Sadly, nobody has invented a wood-fired air conditioner yet. Posted at 10:37 AM | Permalink | | Tue - July 11, 2006 09:33 PMHeatLast summer was nice and cool. We saved a ton on
air conditioning.
Not this summer. This week alone is forecast to
have more 90-degree days than all of last summer put
together.
Combine that with the utter lack of rain since the beginning of June, and things are getting more than a little parched here in the Frozen North. This weekend, the forecast is for highs pushing 100. We're thinking about trying to escape the heat by heading up to Grand Marais, on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The weather there is supposed to be highs in the 70's, considerably more tolerable. Posted at 09:33 PM | Permalink | | Thu - April 13, 2006 04:42 PMSpring UpdateWith a high in the 80's today and creeping
humidity, I think it is fair to say that Spring has arrived in the Frozen North.
Since I've been remiss in my blogging duties lately (and I took the afternoon
off because of a really annoying cold), here's a quick update on
Spring:
Crocuses.
We have crocuses. I planted about a hundred of 'em in one of our flower beds
last fall, and they're all blooming at once. For some reason, the critters
aren't eating them this year as they often do. Maybe that's because I planted
them among daffodils (which give bunnies and deer bad tummyaches. Everybody
together now: awwwwwww), or maybe we just don't have as many rabbits this spring
as usual.
Speaking of bulbs, the daffodils are starting to bloom. I planted about 300 of those last fall, and the first are just opening today. In a few days it will be an explosion of yellow. Recall that last fall I transplanted four sugar maple seedlings (of various sizes) from our place in Northern Minnesota. Two of the four have extremely fat buds right now and there's no doubt they'll leaf out soon. One of the four (the smallest) got severely nibbled, and doesn't have any buds left at all. That one probably won't make it. The fourth seems to be OK, just a bit behind the other two. The lesson: when transplanting sugar maples, go for size. Six- to eight-foot seedlings seem to do just fine, even if I have to leave some of the roots behind. Costco had blueberry plants a few days ago. Bought eight, and some fencing to keep the deer out. We have a very sunny spot near the pond with very sandy, rich soil. I think it will be perfect. Anyway, they're doing fine so far. I finally got all the firewood from last fall split, stacked, and off the lawn. There's currently about four cords remaining, nearly all of it green cottonwood. Two cords are stacked in the garage, one in the house near the stove, and one outside. By fall the stuff should be dry and reasonable to burn. I also suspect I'll use up the stuff inside before the season really ends--it just takes one good cold snap and/or some recreational fires. I'm already prowling for more wood for next year. Also on the subject of firewood, I'm cutting down some big boxelders in our backyard. Boxelders are ubiquitous around here, but as trees go they're nothing special. The ones I'm removing are shading some maples, and I'd much rather have the maples. I should get a few cords of firewood out of that project. Posted at 04:42 PM | Permalink | | Sun - March 12, 2006 08:01 AMOMFG!!!!1!11!1 WINTER!!!!@!1This winter has been one of the mildest
ever
in the Twin Cities. That's actually nice timing, given that the winter started
with historically high prices for natural gas, which is what most people in the
midwest use for heat.
But it looks like we're finally going to get a
taste of the white stuff. After frustrating snow lovers all season by sending
every storm just to the north or south of us, today we're right in the
bull's-eye. The forecast for tonight is calling for 6-10 inches of snow in a
100-mile wide band centered on a line from Redwood Falls (about 100 miles WSW of
Minneapolis) to minneapolis.
I may finally get a chance to use that brand-new snowshovel I bought back in December, and which has sat untouched and pristine in our garage ever since. Posted at 08:01 AM | Permalink | | Fri - January 27, 2006 09:14 PMSpringtime?Make a note of this: Spring arrived in
Minneapolis on January 27th, 2006.
The meteorologists will claim that spring doesn't
arrive until the end of March; and most years we don't actually see it until
April sometime. But today it was
unmistakable.
It wasn't just the warm weather (upper 40's for a high) and the fact that there's a 70% chance of rain tomorrow, nor the rapidly disappearing snow. It was the fact that all five senses positively screamed SPRING every time I went outside. The warmth and humidity of the air on my skin. The thawing ground squishing under my feet. The distinctive odor of melting mud. It is supposed to cool down a little more next week, but only down into the 30's. That's still unseasonably warm for this time of year. In fact, we have had an unbroken sting of unseasonably warm days since before Christmas, with no sign of it letting up. This may go down as the year without a winter in Minnesota. Posted at 09:14 PM | Permalink | | Wed - December 14, 2005 08:45 PMOur house is under water!Thanks to the storm this week, our entire house
is under water, about six inches of it. Worse, it might not go away until March
or April. And our insurance isn't likely to do anything about it!
Fortunately, it isn't liquid, but the frozen
fluffy stuff. So as long as the furnace works, we're perfectly content to live
a few months "under water."
This was the first significant snowstorm of the season, and even though it was only about six inches, it was really heavy stuff. A heart-attack snow, so-named because of all the heart attacks it creates when Grandpa decides to shovel the driveway by hand instead of hiring the neighbor kid to do it with a snowblower. I think I'm one of the last two or three people in the entire state who clears his driveway by hand (that is, with a shovel). We had a service for a number of years, when I was traveling all the time, and later I tried using a snowblower for one season. The snowblower just wasn't worth it. It was loud, stinky (two-cycle engine), hard to get started, and not even all that much faster than the shovel. Our driveway isn't that large. So every time it snows, I have the chance to get a nice workout--I worked up a good sweat tonight--and listen to all the neighbors curse as the gloppy wet snow clogs their discharge chutes. Posted at 08:45 PM | Permalink | | Mon - December 5, 2005 11:11 PMTruly Frozen NorthWe went from abnormally warm to abnormally cold
in the blink of an eye. Tonight's forecast low in Minneapolis is -8...weather
more typical of the deepest cold snaps of the season than early
December.
Also, our wood stove installation has been
delayed--again!--until the very end of December. It seems that now that we have
snow and ice, the installers who had been scheduled for Friday can't do it any
more. They don't have the proper equipment to be working on an icy roof.
December 29th is the earliest date we can get someone who does have the proper
equipment.
That means that by the time we have our wood heat, nearly half the heating season will be gone. All this is made more aggravating by the fact that it could have been installed last Monday, if the company hadn't screwed up. Instead, we get delay after delay. Posted at 11:11 PM | Permalink | | Wed - November 16, 2005 10:42 AMTips for Coping with the ColdToday feels like winter. Serious winter. It is
supposed to get into the single digits tonight, and the wind is howling across a
fresh glaze of snow and ice. It isn't just cold: it sounds cold, it looks cold,
it even smells cold.
So it seems like a good time to present tips for coping with the cold. Not the cold outside, but the cold inside. In my quest to save money on our heating bill,
we've set our thermostat to 55 degrees Monday through Friday (68 on the
weekends), on the theory that we're not home and awake most of the week.
There's no question that this is saving us a ton of money: the amount of energy
it takes to heat a house is proportional to the difference between the outside
and inside temperatures. Keeping the inside temperature 15 degrees cooler than
normal reduces the temperature difference
a
lot.
But 55 degrees is, at best, barely comfortable. When the snow flies and the wind hows, it feels decidedly unsnug. So here are some coping strategies: Tip 1: Sleeping is the easiest to deal with. Lots of blankets, and an electric blanket on the master bed (the kids get footed PJs instead). A warm bed in a chilly room is surprisingly snug, and we all sleep really well. No problems here. Tip 2: Keep moving. If you just sit still, you will start to feel cold. But if you're moving around, you don't notice the chill. Tip 3: Warm clothes. Duh. Heavy sweaters and sweatshirts are the norm in the Frozen North household. Tip 4: A warm haven. In our house, we have a separate furnace for one of the rooms off the kitchen (it was an addition, and apparently it was easier to add a second furnace than to connect the addition to the existing system). If necessary, we can close the kitchen doors and heat just the kitchen and one other room. This is much cheaper than warming up the whole house. A space heater or a roaring fire can also create small warm havens. Tip 5: Calculate savings. If we're going to be uncomfortable, it helps to know that it's worth it. When the gas bill arrives, get out the calculator and figure out how much you're saving this winter. In addition to saving money, we've discovered some other advantages of keeping the house cool. We're reducing (dramatically) the amount of CO2 we emit into the atmosphere, though a little global warming might feel good on a day like today. We're also more acclimated to the cool weather, so the cold outside doesn't feel quite as cold. Remarkably enough, the kids haven't complained at all about the chill, though none of them have expressed any desire to wear T-shirts to school (as has happened from time to time in previous winters). The only complaints have been from She Who Puts Up With Me And My Crazy Ideas, and even She's been a pretty good sport. Wood Heat Update: Our stove insert has arrived, and now we have to schedule an installation date. The earliest date we can get is 11/28, about a week and a half from today. Unfortunately, we have to get the chimneys cleaned first, and that won't happen until 12/6. I'm going to see if there's any way I can get an earlier date for the chimney sweep, though I'm not optimistic. Posted at 10:42 AM | Permalink | | Tue - November 15, 2005 08:18 PMDamp SquibThe first major snowstorm of the season is in the
process of fizzling. Big-time.
They promised as much as 8 inches of snow. Here
it is, about halfway through the storm, and there's barely an icing on the
grass. Now they're saying that we might get a couple
inches.
The problem is that it just didn't get cold enough fast enough. We had quite a bit of rain--and if it had been ten degrees colder, we probably would have six inches of snow on the ground right now. It started raining last night, but we didn't even get the first actual snow until a couple hours ago. Better luck next time. Posted at 08:18 PM | Permalink | | Sun - November 13, 2005 08:54 AMWinter has arrived (somewhat tardily)After our amazing run of beautiful fall weather,
it's payback time.
Yesterday was probably the last truly nice day of
the year, with a high of 60 and an occasional peek of the sun. Then the rains
came.
We didn't get much rain here, but some places got pretty spectacular thunderstorms. We were even under a tornado watch (very rare in Minnesota in November) for a few hours. Then the wind. And the cold. The temperature this morning is 20 degrees cooler than at this time yesterday, and you can hear a dull roar from outside as the wind whips through the bare tree branches. We're supposed to get about 24 hours of nice weather--clear skies, less wind, but a high in the low 40's today--then the second storm arrives sometime tomorrow. That storm will bring snow (70% chance, and some areas could see as much as six inches) and much colder weather. Lows in the teens. Any snow we get probably won't stay long. The ground is much too warm for a sticks-until-April snowfall. But this is our annual reminder that in Minnesota, you always pay a price for nice weather. Wood Heat Update: Still no word on the stove insert, but I'm still expecting it around the end of the month. That would be about two weeks from now. The installation can't happen before the chimney sweeps are here to do their thing, so December 7th is the earliest we could have the stove in place. I've built a crib in the garage which can hold about 1 1/3 cords of firewood, which will allow me to get some of it out of the way of where we park the minivan, and make more space for more firewood. With the crib, there's probably capacity for about two more cords of firewood. One frustration right now is just not knowing how much is enough. On the one hand, I don't want to run out in the middle of the season, and it is much preferable to end with some left over for next season. On the other hand, the stuff takes up a lot of room, and I don't want to stock far far more than I actually need. In a more normal season (that is, one in which we already had the stove insert), I would already be actively consuming firewood even as I keep stocking throughout the fall, so I would have at least some idea of how much inventory I need to have. Posted at 08:54 AM | Permalink | | Sat - November 5, 2005 07:55 AMThat wonderful November weather!November is usually the month when it gets cold,
cloudy, and snowy. It is the time of year when Minnesotans get the distinct
cosmic message that winter is really coming.
Not this
year.
We've had an amazing run of consistently clear, temperate weather. Even though the temperatures have been right around the long-term average, the season so far as a whole has been very mild. No big cold snaps, no huge storms, no gales of wind howling out of the north. That has been helping the campaign to minimize our heating bill this winter. As you may recall, until the wood-burning stove arrives, we're keeping the house at 55 degrees during the work week when we're only home and awake a few hours each day. On the weekends, we warm the house to 68. Last night was the first time the house actually required the furnace to stay at 55 degrees. That means that we've been able to keep the furnace off entirely during the work week (normally it would run for an hour or two each day). I'll have an exact number when we get the next gas bill, but this could be saving us as much as $2-$3 each day. But the real savings will come when we get the stove insert for the fireplace installed. Then we should be able to keep the house at a reasonable temperature without running the furnace at all until it starts getting really cold in December, January, and February. Right now, we don't have an installation date, but we're guessing around the first week of December. I've also got 4-5 cords of firewood stockpiled, with at least another cord I can cut and haul from my parents' yard. Firewood storage is beginning to become a real issue: it is crowding the van out of the garage, and I've taken up part of our back patio too. About 1.5 cords of the firewood is very green, since it had just been cut. I scored a cord from someone who had just cut down a couple of big trees, and half a cord from my parents was cut from downed-but-still-living trees. The green firewood isn't going to burn well until it has a chance to dry out, which will be only a few weeks for the small pieces, or a year for the big logs. Where I can, I'm trying to split the big logs so they'll dry faster, but it is hard to split green firewood. I may bring some of it indoors, too, if I can figure out where to store it. I have 2-3 cords of very old and partly rotted firewood from our backyard. This is stuff from a neighbor's tree which was cut down five or six years ago. This is what I'll burn first, since it will burn easily, though it won't burn for long because of its rotten condition. Some of that wood has carpenter ants living in it, so those logs will be kept outside until I'm actually ready to stuff them in the stove. That leaves only about 1/2 cord of dry-but-not-rotted firewood, the stuff which burns the best. Most of that is from my parents' yard, and had been cut and stacked 2-3 years ago, though there is a small amount from my own yard which I cut this past spring. The good stuff will be burned after the rotten wood is used up, and I'll probably mix it in with some of the green firewood, since it will help the still-moist wood burn better. So the bottom line is that I've got 4-5 cords of wood stored, but of that only 1/2 cord is really good wood ready to be burned now. 1.5 cords may be ready to burn well before the end of the season, but 2-3 cords (over half!) probably won't provide much heat value at all. Those 2-3 cords of partly rotten wood will probably provide about as much heat as 1/2 or one cord of the good stuff. So in effect, I only have 2.5-3 cords of usable wood. Which means that my poor suffering wife will probably have to watch as even more of our storage space becomes consumed with piles of firewood. Posted at 07:55 AM | Permalink | | Wed - October 5, 2005 10:33 AMAh, MinnesotaThe weather here is guaranteed to never be
boring.
Monday it was humid with a high in the 80's.
Last night we got three inches of rain at our house (some places in the Twin
Cities got five). Fortunately we live on a hill, so flooding is rarely a
problem as long as we can keep the water from pooling at the foundation. Others
are not so fortunate, and several roads are closed this morning, and lots of
people have water in their
basements.
Tonight there's a chance of snow, with a low forecast in the 30's. The good news is that the weekend is supposed to be spectacular: clear, cool but not cold, and dry. UPDATE: We had another big rainstorm in September, and so area lakes and streams are really full for this time of year. Driving around today, I've found that Lake Smetana (behind my office) is about three feet higher than it was a week ago, and about as high as I've ever seen it. Nine Mile Creek, which feeds Lake Smetana, is actually flowing across Valley View Rd. Wing Lake, near my home, is the highest I've ever seen it, and up onto the road which runs along one side of the lake. Posted at 10:33 AM | Permalink | | Sun - September 4, 2005 10:23 AMTrain EchoUsually thunderstorms rumble through and are gone
after 20 minutes to an hour. Every now and then, you get clusters of storms
continually re-forming over the same spot for an extended period of time. This
is known as a "train echo" pattern, and can dump a lot of rain
over a short period of time.
That's what we had at our home last night. The
first thunderstorm came through at about 3:30 PM yesterday, and the forecast
called for a decent chance of rain overnight, and clearing
today.
But then the train echo started. Every hour or two since the first storm, another one has rolled through. Even now, 19 hours later, there's still thunder and lightning. We've gotten well over two inches of rain in our backyard rain gauge, and some places just a few miles from here have gotten at much as six inches of rain. Local streams are running high and fast, even though they were hardly flowing at all a couple days ago. Watching the time-lapse on the weather radar shows exactly what's been happening. Every hour or two, a storm would form over about the same spot somewhere northwest of our house and start moving southeast, forming a very clear line of storms about 25-50 miles apart, each following in the wake of the one before. Throughout the night, the spot where the storms have been forming has been very gradually drifting southeast, and is now right over our house. If this pattern holds, in another hour or two it should clear out and we may have a nice day. Posted at 10:23 AM | Permalink | | Mon - August 29, 2005 10:03 AMAlmost Worst-CaseIt looks like Hurricane Katrina may not quite
deliver the worst-case scenario blow to New Orleans.
That's cold comfort, to be
sure.
Granted, I've never been particularly enamored with the hot, sticky climate of the Gulf coast, but right now I'm particularly grateful to be in Minnesota where our summers are (reasonably) comfortable, and the worst weather we have to deal with is the occasional tornado or blizzard. Also, one might reasonably ask whether Katrina is as strong as she is because of global warming. That's an excellent question, and one I'm sure the experts will be arguing about before the cleanup has even started. But it is fair to assume the answer is Yes, given that hurricanes feed on warm water, and the water in the Gulf of Mexico is unusually warm (over 90F in places) this summer. In more general terms, global warming leading to more severe weather doesn't surprise me a bit. The logic, for anyone with a background in physics or engineering, is straightforward: the Earth's atmosphere is basically a giant natural heat engine, driven between the temperature difference between the equator and the poles. When you raise the operating temperature of a heat engine, all else being equal, it speeds up and outputs more energy. In meteorological terms, that translates into bigger storms, higher winds, etc. Of course, the "all else being equal" part is a bit of a kicker, since other things can come into play. For example, bigger storms (area-wise) mean more of the Earth's surface covered by clouds, which means a higher albedo, which means more sunlight reflected into space and less heat reaching the surface. Posted at 10:03 AM | Permalink | | Sun - August 28, 2005 02:28 PMA Personal Invitation to Residents of New OrleansI understand that there are a lot of New Orleans
residents currently taking an unexpected and indefinite vacation.
Just how indefinite, we'll know in a few days
after Katrina passes through and we have a chance to see what the damage is
like.
In the meanwhile.... If you're fleeing New Orleans and looking for some place to go, allow me to extend you a personal invitation to join us at the Minnesota State Fair. Going on now through next Monday, this is the largest state fair in the country. It is sort of like a midwestern Lutheran version of Mardi Gras, which is to say, less nudity, and more deep-fried food on a stick. As a bonus, the weather is supposed to be perfect: sunny skies, low humidity, highs in the 70's and low 80's. In fact, the whole month of August has been pretty much ideal weather-wise (makes up for January). So feel free to join us. I can guarantee it will be more pleasant here than down there for the next few days, and there's lots of hotel rooms still available. Posted at 02:28 PM | Permalink | | Tue - March 29, 2005 02:05 PMSpring StormA week ago we were barely getting above freezing
in the daytime. This week, we're staying in the 40's even overnight. Almost
all the snow is gone, too.
Such is spring in Minnesota, easily the
squishiest and most unpredictable
season.
Most years we get a warm spell which melts most of the snow, then an early spring thunderstorm which finishes off the last of the big piles (plus rinses the salt off the roads as a bonus). This year will be no different, with an 80% chance of rain tomorrow, up to an inch possible. Oh yes, and let's not forget the most important sign of spring: yesterday we cracked the hermetic seal on our house for the first time since October and cranked open some windows to let the fresh air in. She Who Puts Up With Me insisted that I close them in the evening. Actually, She said "If you keep the windows open, then I'm wearing a flannel nightgown to bed." It didn't take me long to decide which option to choose. Posted at 02:05 PM | Permalink | | Thu - March 10, 2005 07:56 AMSpring TeaseWe had 50's in February, and what little snow we
had melted. Then one pathetic snowstorm gave us about 8 inches (that's the only
real snowstorm we've had all season).
But it stayed cold since then. Not bitterly
cold, but consistently below freezing, even into March when the average highs
are well above freezing.
Last weekend, we had one day of almost 60 degrees. The snow from the February storm melted in a single day. Since then? Just below freezing the whole time. And it looks like it'll stay that way for a while. Spring is such a tease this year! Posted at 07:56 AM | Permalink | | Mon - February 14, 2005 05:24 PMFlowers on Valentine's DayFlowers on Valentine's Day are not unusual. In
Minnesota, however, it is unusual for the flowers to be sprouting from the
ground.
No joke. Yesterday, February 13th, I spotted the
first daffodil shoots of the season. There's a sheltered spot by the south wall
of our house where the shoots always come up first. Usually in April, sometimes
in late March if we've had a mild winter. But never in
February.
Then last night we got a couple inches of sticky, wet snow. Buried those brave little shoots for a few hours until the 45-degree sunshine melted all the snow again. Right now, the forecast is for a few colder days. The daffodils may regret their premature sprouting. Posted at 05:24 PM | Permalink | | Thu - February 3, 2005 09:05 AMMild winter? WTF?Even as much of the rest of the country has been
flash-frozen then buried in snow this winter, here in the Twin Cities this is
looking like one of the mildest and driest winters in recent
memory.
To date, we've had almost no snow, and only one
serious cold snap. Even that cold snap was not nearly as cold as is typical: it
got down to -15, as compared to -25 last winter, and -20 the year
before.
We're now in the middle of an exceptionally warm week, with highs close to 50 for the next three days. What little snow we have could be mostly gone by the weekend. Even though January and February are normally the coldest months of the year, time is running out for another major cold snap. We just don't normally get deep subzero temperatures after the end of February, and by the end of March even the record lows are getting above zero. I realize that to a resident of Austin or Orlando the phrases "it got down to -15" and "even the record lows are getting above zero" don't sound particularly balmy. But if you compare this year to most, we're getting off lightly in the winter department. Posted at 09:05 AM | Permalink | | Sun - January 2, 2005 08:24 AMSleetWe had a sleetstorm last night. For those not
familiar with the vagaries of northern precipitation, sleet is little frozen
balls of ice, usually the size of mustard seeds or smaller, and sometimes with a
bit of freezing rain mixed in. Sleet is distinct from snow, hail, freezing
rain, and all the other forms of frozen precipitation.
Sleet happens when there's freezing rain aloft,
which freezes almost completely before reaching the ground. If the ground
temperature is just a few degrees warmer, you'd get freezing rain. Freezing
rain falls as liquid, but freezes as soon as it hits something, and is far worse
than sleet. This is one of those few times you're thankful for the
cold.
The storm last night left about an inch of sleet over everything. In practical terms, this is like getting a couple inches of snow: a nuisance, but not a big deal. Imagine someone dumping a giant Icee all over the ground. When it comes to shoveling, though, an inch of sleet is about the worst case scenario. There's just enough of it to make one feel obligated to clean it up, but it all froze to the ground overnight. The blade of the snowshovel simply slides across the icy crust, rather than doing anything productive. Some (but not all) snowblowers will do a good job on this mess, but I'm a bit old-fashioned and like to move snow by hand. The only way to shovel an inch of frozen sleet is to laboriously scrape the stuff up from the pavement. It didn't take long to discover that this process would take hours for our small driveway. So I did the only rational thing under the circumstances. I scraped off the front steps, then went inside to check the weather forecast for a warming trend. Posted at 08:24 AM | Permalink | | Sun - December 12, 2004 04:15 PMMinnesota WinterHow bad is winter in Minnesota?
Really
bad.
Thanks to global warming and gas heat, we don't have to suffer quite as much as Minnesotans of yore (no eating dead babies, for example). But the rest of the country is still a bunch of wussies. Posted at 04:15 PM | Permalink | | |
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