Monday, February 08, 2021

Winter Arrives, Belatedly

It's six degrees Fahrenheit and my car won't start. I blame Tom Brady.

However, it's nothing like what Garret is having to deal with in Winnipeg. Have a look:











Those temperatures are in Celsius, but the scales momentarily converge at -40, so you don't need to do much translation. I don't even know why they bother beyond about -35, because as John Harwood says, -35 is the "Stay the f--- inside" temperature and requires no further explanation.

Like I said a few weeks ago, the apartment has an equilibrium temperature, and it's relatively pointless to keep it above that temperature, because the heater has to be on almost non-stop. 

Here's an example why.

I heated the apartment up to 70.5 before I started working today (hey, I didn't grow up in the North, and my hands are always cold). 

Here's a graph of the decay after I turned the heater off (and didn't turn it on again).







Each of those times represents a 10-minute period. And you can see that whatever excess warmth was generated by the heater (about two degrees) is mostly gone within an hour. Then the rate of decay starts to slow as the room nears its equilibrium temperature, and when it gets there, it doesn't change (it's been three hours--the graph doesn't reflect the last half hour or so). 

The equilibrium point changes with different temperatures outside, but I've never seen it below 67F. Which is pretty fantastic, considering I have two big patio windows.

Blankets as necessary.

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