We listen to the weather forecasts but you never know how accurate they are. We knew it was finally going to get winter here and of course we’ve seen this before. Lynn and I live in a cabin, cabins are great but they are not nearly as well insulated as some of the more modern housing designs that use a combination of spray foam, and insulated panels for construction. We of course have window film on all our windows, and I have been able to seal up any air leaks I have discovered over the last several winters. On final line of defense I have found is keeping our heavy summer blackout curtains closed all the time. There isn ‘t much light this time of year anyway. Since we can’t look out at the street without opening them the first real sign that cold weather is coming is the absence of kids riding up and down the street on their snow machines, (snowmobiles to those from out of state). When its too cold for a teenager in interior Alaska to ride their snow machine believe me its cold. Next thing is to log onto facebook and see how many people are posting pictures from in front of the UAF sign with the thermometer in Fairbanks. Yep, there are some brave people there. I won’t post someone else’s photographs but if you are curious type “40 below club” into your favorite search engine and look at images. I won’t spoil it for you, just look it up. Since we don’t have any bank thermometers in Galena I will do what everyone else does. I’ll post a picture of my plain old thermometer below.
Yep, thats -58F and it actually got colder than that. Next day I saw the red, (I know its not mercury), down below the bracket. I have no idea how cold it was. Just didn’t want to stay outside and take pictures of it. I’m scared to take my Nikon out in that kind of cold and I’m really not too crazy about getting my phone out at those temps either.
The picture on the top of this post is my Blaze King woodstove. Blaze Kings are a catalytic stove, very efficient and they put out a lot of heat. Normally when they are operating you don’t see any flames, kind of boring visually but very efficient. Any time you have it turned up high enough to see actual flames you really have it cranked up. I had the damper up to the middle position when I took that picture. It stayed there two days. One other thing that happens is that below -44F propane appliances don’t work. Some people refer to this as “freezing” their propane which I’m sure causes chemical engineers to cringe. I’m no chemist or chemical engineer but the boiling point of propane is -44F. Any temperature below that and it is a liquid. There is no real safe way to heat it so when its below that temperature you do without anything running on propane. In our case it is the cook stove, oven and our dryer. Our hot water and the Toyo heater run on heating oil. I know some people in Galena who have propane hot water heaters although I am at a loss to understand why. Mostly at these temperatures we try to limit our time outside, stay inside and hope nothing breaks or freezes that requires us to go outside. People are pretty adaptable to these extremes but machinery is another matter. Most airline operations cease below -50F so everything kind of grinds to a halt here anyway. School however is always in session. Think about that on your next snow day.
One more thing about the cold then I’ll move on. In the picture of Snowball above a local would know that it must be relatively warm, (above -20F), outside as I have the cabinet doors closed. Our water lines in the house run inside the heated living space but in very cold temperatures we open the cabinet doors to allow the warmer air to circulate better, keeps the water flowing and prevents some of the food items stored in the cabinets from freezing.
Other goings on
Lynn is using the time to catch up on more of her quilting, she has one ready to send out to be quilted and is working on another. I’ve been continuing on with my marathon training but this week I’ve been running indoors more than outdoors. Today was my weekly long run and it had warmed up to 1F so I ran outside. It snowed an inch or so today but other than that it was fine. School is back in session, into our normal routine in the morning. Lynn starts swim team practice again next week. She wanted to allow the kids to get back into their school routine before starting the early morning practice sessions. I had some feedback about including some recipes in my weekly post. I’ll be working on that next week. Nothing fancy, just some of the things we come up with here. The weather is supposed to clear off a bit this week but the temperatures are forecast to be moderate so I might actually come up with some photographs for next time. Until then, stay warm!