The Polar Vortex Chill Eases and Lessons Learned

Today we are above 0°! In fact, our thermometer indicates 15°. It is hard to imaging that on Monday we were down around -15° all day. It is now 30°s warmer and it is still darn cold!

This "polar vortex" hit us hard, practically shutting down the airports, making the roads a slippery mess, causing ice to form on the inside of some of our windows, and making our house darn uncomfortable! Sharon and I have pretty much been hunkered down since our ill fated trip to O'Hare on Monday. Sharon has been working at her computer helping clients in Ohio and Alaska. It is warmer in our house than at the office in Ohio and warmer outside in Alaska than it is here.

A few things I learned. When it is -15° outside, I should not let our furnace follow normal programming at night. Usually in the winter our thermostat drops us to 60° or 62° at night and then brings the furnace on in the morning to raise the house temperature to 68°. On Monday it was so cold outside that it took a good eight hours to get us up to 68°. On Tuesday night I let the temperature drop to 64° overnight and we recovered very quickly.

Also, windows that leak air normally seem to leak a lot more when it is so cold outside. I sealed the edges of a kitchen window and door with painter's tape to cut down on drafts. It did make a difference. Also, we normally leave one storm window off of our kitchen windows - this was a bad choice this year.

We have had a constant stream of birds and squirrels to and from our feeder in the back yard. We have seen cardinals, chickadees, nut hatches, downy woodpeckers, sparrows, and red and gray squirrels. Sharon observed a squirrel running up the maple tree with a tortilla we placed out side. The squirrel was attacked by a blue jay and the jay took the tortilla when the squirrel dropped it.

Rush Limbaugh says the Polar Vortex is something that the liberal media invented to explain away global warming. Lots of people have been saying the cold shows that global warming is not happening. Do they forget the difference between local or regional and global? Global weather is not indicated by the weather around you at this moment.