[Magdalen] Winter Blahs.

[Jay Weigel]

Last week at this time I was running around barefoot and in shorts on
Sanibel. This week I am freezing my essentials off back in Virginia and not
happy about it. It just makes the winter blahs worse. The night we got back
we found there had been some sort of power blip and our furnace was out;
it's oil powered but has an electric motor. The temperature in the house
was 46F. I was feeling crummy with a cold I'd picked up somewhere and just
broken out in symptoms with the day before. S/O put me to bed with the
electric blanket while he fired up the pellet stove and got the furnace
running (we use the stove as our main heat source and the furnace as backup
now). It's actually about 40F outside now but looking at the snow on the
ground does not make me very happy.

On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:

>
>
> It was 2 F for a low last night which was the coldest so far this  winter.
> I hate to turn on the general electric heat in the house, though I do have
> it
> turned on in the two bathrooms.  There's nothing quite like sitting on  an
> ice-cold toilet seat.
>
> I otherwise heat with the two propane fireplaces, but in this weather  they
> don't quite fill the bill.  The temperature in the downstairs this  morning
> was 61 F.  Actually, though, we've put on sweaters and bulky, heavy
> trousers,
> and it hasn't been that uncomfortable, and now, just after noon local
> time,
> it's up to 65 F in the house and 22 F outside.
>
> As sorry as we feel for ourselves, I am reminded by the weather  statistics
> that in 1988 the low for this date was -15 F.  I lost two trees in '88  (a
> Leyland
> Cypress - Cupressus leylandii, and an Atlantic Blue Cedar (Cedrus
> atlantica
> glauca), and all my viburnums froze down to the ground.  The  viburnums
> came back, but not the trees.
>
> To show the general warming trend, these below zero winter  temperatures
> which were rather common, have been completely absent for the last 15
> years.
>
> We've gone from USDA Climate Zone 5b to 6a.
>
>
> David Strang - At the edge of the Poconos of  Pennsylvania.
>