A balmy -16 F morning

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
  • Hope everyone has a wonderful and warm Thanksgiving!
  • Super Cedar firestarters 30% discount Use code Hearth2024 Click here

peakbagger

Minister of Fire
Hearth Supporter
Jul 11, 2008
8,978
Northern NH
One of the benefits of living up on a hill on a cold calm night is the temps do not drop as low. I can go 10 miles east and find -28 and about 15 miles west (both open valleys) and find -27F. Its 2 degrees above 5 miles south of me on top of 6288' Mt Washington.
 
We live on a ridge at about 1100'. Most of our 12 acres are all trees, so it cuts down the wind quite a bit.

It was 0' here this morning.

Plenty cold. Wife is looking for someplace warm to hide for a week or so,
 
We live in a bowl that all the cold weather seems to settle in. When the local weather says expect 10-20 below we get 20-30 below.
 
It was also -16°f here Friday morning. :)
 
Woke up to -1 here, while its not a record, its cold for my area, happens once a winter a few days below zero, what gets us is prolonged cold, near zero at night with day time only making it to the low teens for 3 days straight creates a lot of frozen / busted up pipe calls for the fire dept, this is day 2 of the really cold stuff so tomorrow we'll start running water flow alarms.
 
One of the benefits of living up on a hill on a cold calm night is the temps do not drop as low. I can go 10 miles east and find -28 and about 15 miles west (both open valleys) and find -27F. Its 2 degrees above 5 miles south of me on top of 6288' Mt Washington.
Yeah but what’s the wind chill up at 6000 ft? When we skied Sugar Loaf we would always check the weather at the top of Mt Washington. It was the closest we could get to the conditions at the top of Sugarloaf.
 

Its rare but the same weather conditions that lead to cold valleys are the same that lead to minimal wind on the summit of Washington as occurred last night.

Anyone skiing this afternoon should have nice day, albeit still very dependent on man made snow. My area is about half the average snow pack.
 
We woke up to -35f this morning, 5th morning that has been at least -30f in two weeks.
It's been over 20yrs since we've had 1 morning that cold.
 
We are on a ridge at a 1000 ft and 9 times out of 10 the valley to our north is usually colder
then we are.
 
One of the benefits of living up on a hill on a cold calm night is the temps do not drop as low. I can go 10 miles east and find -28 and about 15 miles west (both open valleys) and find -27F. Its 2 degrees above 5 miles south of me on top of 6288' Mt Washington.
There were quite a few -30s in your neck of the woods this morning, so nice to feel that wood heat on such cold morning, isn't it?
 
Yes, I like my boiler but I am going through a lot more wood. Funny thing is once the sun hits the front of my house and I open up the blinds, the place self heats quite well. Then around 3PM the sun goes down behind the trees and I have about 2 or 3 hours to refire the boiler.
 

Its rare but the same weather conditions that lead to cold valleys are the same that lead to minimal wind on the summit of Washington as occurred last night.

Anyone skiing this afternoon should have nice day, albeit still very dependent on man made snow. My area is about half the average snow pack.

Man made snow is tough to come by at the Vail owned NH ski areas
 
Lots of grousing by folks who bought Epic season passes from the new Vail owned resorts in the area. Reportedly Vail is not competitive for pay for snow makers so they cant even make the snow as they do not have enough snowmakers. It is cold miserable work making snow which is normally done at night and involves hooking up and unhooking water hoses all night in below zero weather with wind chill. They also have had continuing problems with the main chair at Loon for several years and Wildcat just had a chairlift failure.

The snowmachine folks are getting on the trails even though the snow pack is thin so not a lot of grooming. The rental places are lying to folks to get them up here and last weekend there were numerous accidents partially due to crappy snow conditions.

The weather hype is now on for a big storm Saturday. It's pretty predictable, hype the possible storm to get eyeballs on the local news then get real on Friday after folks have already booked their weekend reservations.
 
How does the Kuuma do heating your place in those temps?
Does a great job considering what I’m heating. I won’t get into those details as they are available if anybody wants to check it out. I leave my propane set at 67 and the thermostat for the Kuuma at 68. With these temperatures I usually load the Kuuma at night at about 11:00 with 2 large and 2 medium sized splits . At -24 the propane kicks in maybe every 2.5 hours but for short intervals as it blows it’s heat and also the heat from the Kuuma. With the computer set halfway between medium and high I can reload at about 8:am. I cleaned the HX two days ago and can keep this big old house at 68-69 with temps down to 0 with no propane kicking in.:)
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: JRHAWK9
Just a quick update. AT 8:15 this morning with temps at -14 I loaded the Kuuma with 2 large splits and one medium. 2 1/2 hours later it is now -4 and the propane never kicked in with the above thermostat settings and the Kuuma set on medium.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JRHAWK9
Just a quick update. AT 8:15 this morning with temps at -14 I loaded the Kuuma with 2 large splits and one medium. 2 1/2 hours later it is now -4 and the propane never kicked in with the above thermostat settings and the Kuuma set on medium.

impressive! No way could I do that with our place!
 
Another cold one tonight.
 
We are expecting -6 in the morning, but it always feels colder, especially when the constant breeze comes from the north instead of the south.
 
-28 F in Berlin NH (actually Milan NH)down in a river valley about 20 minutes from my house, -21 in Whitefield NH and -16 at my house