Working as Designed - it's just COLD OUT

[dreamshark]

Had a moment of panic this morning when I noticed that it was only 60 degrees in the living room and the furnace wasn't running. But after a little experimentation and reflection, I think it's working as designed, just not keeping up. The radiators are all smokin' hot, even the one in Amber's room (Christmas miracle! For the first time in 28 years, it started heating up all the way to the top!). When the radiators start to cool down a little, the heat comes on for a while, then goes off again. I think it must have a cutoff of some kind to stop running when the water reaches some maximum temp, regardless of what the thermostat says. It's not supposed to be steam heat, after all. Unfortunately, this is a cavernous house with lots of heat leaks and one little radiator in each room just isn't keeping up with the heat suck.

It's actually perfectly comfortable upstairs, heat rising and all that. Oh, brain attack! How's about I close the door to the attic (which is heated entirely by heat rising from the lower floors). *duh* And maybe now would be a good time to turn on the oven and try out that beer bread mix my sister-in-law gave us for Christmas!

For the record, it was -22 this morning and breezy. Pretty cold for post-climate-change Minnesota, but I note that it is neither as cold nor as windy as the weather services predicted. I still think it's kind of an over-reaction to close down the city for this (especially since this is pretty much what winter was always like back in the '70's when I moved here). But my management went with the flow and sent everybody email telling us to "work from home," so that's what I'm doing. 

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

It also seems hard (impossible?) to find historical data on school closings.

I think the daily highs are important, too, not just the lows. The top ten list of extended periods at zero or below from 1873 to 2014 includes 1994, 1970, 1963, 1936, 1911, 1904, and earlier--so you and I (arrived Jan. 1971) have been in Minnesota for only one of those. Only 27 times in 141 years have we had four consecutive days of below-zero highs; we aren't going to have them this week, as it is supposed to get to +2 today, but back below zero for a high tomorrow, so that's three days out of four consecutive, and awfully close today.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Multiple days of CONSECUTIVE below-zero highs is very unusual. However, during the years I mentioned it was not at all unusual to have 3-5 day stretches that were entirely below zero except for one day in the middle where the temp bounced up into the single digits. That's exactly what's happening right now, and everybody seems surprised (and terrified!). This pattern was not at all surprising during most of the 1970's.

I agree that yesterday was a mighty frigid day by any standard. You don't often see a HIGH in the negative double digits! Today, however, is just another cold day in Minnesota with a high in the single digits (it's already 2 above, and we've got a couple more hours until the temperature peaks).

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I don't see that on the charts--I see mainly days with highs above zero. The average January low is 7 and high is 24. The WeatherSpark site says, "The month of January is characterized by ... daily highs ... dropping below 8°F only one day in ten."

I think people tend to remember "the old days" according to their own personal experience rather than on an objective factual basis. Wunderground.com says the Minneapolis temperature on January 2, 1980 was low +15 and high +26. It didn't go below zero until January 7 (low of -2), on the 8th it didn't get above zero, on the 9th it was slightly above zero, and on the 10th it was +43. So there was only that single day when it didn't get above zero. There were 8 more days in the month with a low below zero, but no days with a high below zero.