This week, we got to pretend that we live in the midwest/northeast. You know, the frigidly brutal weather where you feel like just staying alive is an accomplishment. Now I will be the first to say it - we have gone soft. We routinely would go to school in weather like this in PA while in graduate school, where highs in the single digits were the norm and not the extreme exception. Don't even get me started on my youth in North Dakota where the only time I remember getting school canceled was because the air temp was -40F and with the constantly blowing wind, the wind chill temp was -70F. That is some seriously cold weather (and life threatening too).
The view out the front window Tuesday morning
So comparatively, it is not so bad here. But it is still cold, and it was this sort of weather that made us want to move to ABQ in the first place! Yesterday, our high was 12F with overnight low of -3F, today's high was around 8F with over night low predicted around -10F. Very cold for ABQ. The worst that we can remember was maybe hitting the single digits overnight, but never for the whole day. On the news they say that it is the coldest since 1990.
It is still daylight at the temp is only 9F - never before have seen this in ABQ
Even since Connor arrived we have been keeping our house warmer than we used to - around 68 in the day and 62 at night. Prior to his arrival, we kept the house at 65 during the day and 58 at night. Our 1951 era house is surprisingly well insulated (the results of an energy audit this summer), but is still heated by the very inadequate original duct work running through the crawl space - the result is that the heat is very uneven through out the house which causes drafts between rooms. But one advantage of a 60 year old house is that it has been through worse weather than we are having now, so we are fairly confident that we won't wake up to frozen pipes or anything. The only pipes we have that run in an exterior wall is the water for the washing machine. Just to be safe, we are doing a load of laundry tonight which I have cleverly set up to just trickle water into the bowl. The hope is it takes a good 4 hours to do the laundry so the constantly running water won't have a chance to freeze.
So overall, not too bad. This week is my 4 day work week, and I got half of yesterday off and 2 hours today for bad weather. Still hoping for another delay tomorrow, but doesn't look like it. I drove into work 2 days in a row, which hasn't happened in about 2 years (there is no way would I try to bike). The worst of it was walking across from the parking lot to my building which is about a 1/2 mile jaunt in the 30 mph wind (brrrr!). I would say that Ali had it better as she had 2 days of canceled classes at UNM (now remember, this is for approximately 1-2" of snow on the UNM campus), but she watched after Mr. Destructo both days so it was by no means lazy snow days!
So the cold weather has kind of been fun in a very perverse kind of way. We an still survive, we just are not that happy about it. And doing some quick math, (365*5.5 years) = 2007 days in ABQ. If so far 3 days have been pretty miserable, that means that only 0.15% of our weather has been bad. I am sure our percentage in PA was almost 100x worse at around 15% (to be very generous). And to those people that say "I would rather it be cold than it be hot" - you guys are nuts. What you are really saying is "I would rather it be life threateningly and debilitatingly frigid than to be a little uncomfortable and sweaty". Okay then, you guys can stay where you are and leave the sunshine for us.
The view out the front window Tuesday morning
So comparatively, it is not so bad here. But it is still cold, and it was this sort of weather that made us want to move to ABQ in the first place! Yesterday, our high was 12F with overnight low of -3F, today's high was around 8F with over night low predicted around -10F. Very cold for ABQ. The worst that we can remember was maybe hitting the single digits overnight, but never for the whole day. On the news they say that it is the coldest since 1990.
It is still daylight at the temp is only 9F - never before have seen this in ABQ
Even since Connor arrived we have been keeping our house warmer than we used to - around 68 in the day and 62 at night. Prior to his arrival, we kept the house at 65 during the day and 58 at night. Our 1951 era house is surprisingly well insulated (the results of an energy audit this summer), but is still heated by the very inadequate original duct work running through the crawl space - the result is that the heat is very uneven through out the house which causes drafts between rooms. But one advantage of a 60 year old house is that it has been through worse weather than we are having now, so we are fairly confident that we won't wake up to frozen pipes or anything. The only pipes we have that run in an exterior wall is the water for the washing machine. Just to be safe, we are doing a load of laundry tonight which I have cleverly set up to just trickle water into the bowl. The hope is it takes a good 4 hours to do the laundry so the constantly running water won't have a chance to freeze.
So overall, not too bad. This week is my 4 day work week, and I got half of yesterday off and 2 hours today for bad weather. Still hoping for another delay tomorrow, but doesn't look like it. I drove into work 2 days in a row, which hasn't happened in about 2 years (there is no way would I try to bike). The worst of it was walking across from the parking lot to my building which is about a 1/2 mile jaunt in the 30 mph wind (brrrr!). I would say that Ali had it better as she had 2 days of canceled classes at UNM (now remember, this is for approximately 1-2" of snow on the UNM campus), but she watched after Mr. Destructo both days so it was by no means lazy snow days!
So the cold weather has kind of been fun in a very perverse kind of way. We an still survive, we just are not that happy about it. And doing some quick math, (365*5.5 years) = 2007 days in ABQ. If so far 3 days have been pretty miserable, that means that only 0.15% of our weather has been bad. I am sure our percentage in PA was almost 100x worse at around 15% (to be very generous). And to those people that say "I would rather it be cold than it be hot" - you guys are nuts. What you are really saying is "I would rather it be life threateningly and debilitatingly frigid than to be a little uncomfortable and sweaty". Okay then, you guys can stay where you are and leave the sunshine for us.
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