11 November 2020

As temperatures soared this week from 9 to 19 degrees above normal, I remembered the time when our furnace broke in late September 2009. We thought we could tough it out while we waited for the new furnace to arrive but it was cold! The temperature went down on 25 September 2009 and never came up again. Like ducklings, we huddled inside to stay warm.

This graph shows how much we needed the furnace in the fall of 2009. The higher the blue line, the more we needed heat. We didn’t need air conditioning (orange line) after 25 Sept 2009.

Not so this year! Every 10 days or so the temperature climbs so high that we’d benefit from air conditioning. Rather than flipping the thermostat from heat (blue line) to A/C (red line), I wear my summer clothes again. Climate change makes the temperature fluctuate widely.

For five days this month it was summertime even though the trees couldn’t provide much shade.

Today the weather will turn cold. The furnace is ready. No need to huddle this year.

p.s. Read about our no-furnace adventure in this vintage article: Huddle!

(photos from Wikimedia Commons and by Kate St. John)