Brrr

Glad to see the East is sharing in our latest cold snap. High today was -4, outside on the deck it's now -15 on its way to -25 they say. Of course this is really nothing to complain about - up near Tok, only about 250 miles by road to the northeast, the high today was -29 and the low is right now -49. My last visit to Tok we were wearing shorts and t-shirts - strange to think about! Oddly, 2000 feet above town at Alpenglow ski area, it's +6 tonight. Pleased to see Saranac Lake, NY was making the record cold spot for several days in the -35s.

When it's cold like this we don't really do much outside. Great excuse to stay home and cook and be a family. It's our first cold winter since we moved into this house; we're finding a few small cold spots but otherwise the house is very cozy. A needle of cold air blows in near the bottom of our sunroom french doors. A little bit of glaciation on the base of a few windows but not bad at all.

Rule of thumb, the plumbers told us when our furnace was installed, is that a properly-sized furnace should run continuously on the coldest day of the year (around here, they consider that to be -19 degrees). Our thermostat shows the older part of the house ran for 3/4 of the day but the newer sunroom (more modern but with warm-roof and pillar construction) ran 9/10 of the day.