Friday, January 9, 2015

Cold



Several cities in Alabama broke temperature records yesterday for the coldest temperatures on January 8th since those records began being taken.  When I left for work yesterday, it was a bone chilling 14 degrees.  I know people who love up north think that's nothing, but I live in Alabama, and we rarely get this cold.  The warmest it got all day yesterday was 33 degrees.  Today, the high is expected in the 40s, but the weathermen have been off quite a number of times this week.

Even worse than the cold yesterday was the fact that when I go to my classroom, I had no heat.  Inside it was 53 degrees, so we had class in a different room that had heat until it could be repaired.  It turned out that the four heaters in my building blew the main circuit breaker.  Honestly, it never really got warm in my room.  My building is the only building equipped with electric instead of gas heat, and the bad part of that is that the electric heat is a heat pump.  I don't know if you've ever had the "joys" of having a heat pump, but they are bit very good at keeping places warm.  They will heat for a short while (which is the emergency heat kicking in) but mostly it tries to draw what heat is available outside to indoors.  When it's 14 degrees and most of the day is below freezing, there's not much heat to draw in, so it blows cold air.

Honestly, I don't mind the cold as long as I can be warm inside.  I'd much rather cold weather than the oppressive heat of the summer, but still, down here we aren't used to it being this cold.

6 comments:

silvereagle said...

Cold here also. 20 right now. Glad I am inside. Wear those longjohns. Wonder where they got that name? Was John really long? What if his name had been Dick? Lol

Susan said...

I can appreciate what it must have been like for you living in Alabama. I am in NYC where we are used to cold temps. in the winter, but yesterday was quite brutal. The wake up temp. was 8 degrees, definitely not the norm for us either.

JiEL said...

OMG!

You're so funny to complain about cold weather down there in USA..

In Montreal, we had -22°C with wind fator of -35°C... Just transfer in °F and you'll find out what is REAL POLAR temperature.

Some more northern region like Sept-Îles had even -45°C of VERY cold weather..

Of course, we are used to have those low temperatures and our houses are well equiped to face it.

Have a nice "cold" day..
LOL !!!

I am Charlie...

Anonymous said...

Well it's all relative to what you are used too. I recently moved from Minneapolis and I have experienced so extreme cold. But just wait til the summer when Charlie and I complain about how misetably hot it is in the upper 80s and then Joe can poke fun of us when he's dealing with 102 with a heat index of 114. Lol. It's all what you're used to. I'm now living in Arkansas and its fucking cold!

Amanda said...

I totally understand Joe! I live in TN and its been very cold here this week too. Brrrr! I miss having a fireplace or woodstove or even gas heat! In case of a power outage anyway. Stay warm my friend! :)

Unknown said...

16 - 26 yesterday, with high wind. Warmer today. No worries.

My heat pump, with its "auxiliary" heat strips, has run for nearly 36 straight hours, and the house is staying at the required 66F.

Peace <3
Jay