Sunday, January 18, 2009

Above 10 degrees all day!
No kidding!

We dodged a bullet overnight. The forecasts were for 2-3 inches of snow and another 1-2 inches today. Didn't happen. Apparently, either the winds picked up early (we could hear them during the night) and carried the snow to our north or the low pressure system coming from the west weakened quicker than expected and the energy transferred to the coastal low in the Atlantic.

Which ever occurred, we only had wind-blown drifts and about an inch of new snow to deal with this morning. That took me about forty-five minutes. There have been snow flurries all day but they have amounted to nothing.

The temperatures have also skyrocketed. This morning was 18 degrees warmer than yesterday. That means the thermometer registered 12 degrees F at 8 AM compared to the minus 6 degrees we had on Saturday. It even got up to 20 degrees this afternoon.

Even with the "warm up" I've been keeping a fire going in the fireplace. The fire's been going for almost a week now and the added warmth has been a blessing. I'm sure it will have reduced our use of propane considerably during this frigid spell of weather. The boiler still is heating water for the master bedroom and the basement, but that's a small amount compared to what's used to heat the fist floor and the loft with the cathedral ceiling. I filled the rack in the garage from the outdoor woodpile when I finished shoveling snow this morning but will be doing some more splitting with the maul in a day or two. There's about two weeks of split wood stacked outside but perhaps a month's worth is still in the round. Oh well, if the temperatures are int he 20s all week, I could use the warmth and exercise of swinging a maul.

Forecasts for this week are very monotonous. Highs in the 20s and snow flurries through Thursday. Then, they say, things will get both slightly warmer and a little snowier. How much of each is undetermined.

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