Tick tock. This Sunday we move clocks ahead by one hour as Daylight Saving Time arrives. The official time to do it is at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, moving your clocks forward to 3 a.m. But since most folks are not up at that hour, people tend to do it before going to bed Saturday night.
Now while most people have heard about using the time change dates as reminders to change the batteries in their smoke detectors, there is another kind of detector which should be in every home, and that is a Carbon Monoxide Detector. Carbon Monoxide, CO, is colorless, odorless, and deadly. It can kill you while you sleep.
It is recommended that people have separate detectors. One that is for smoke and one that is for CO. The reason is that the ideal mounting spots for each are different. This will be shown on the package of each.
Unless your home heating system is 100 percent electric, it creates carbon monoxide through the combustion of whatever you burn, be it oil, wood, or pellets.
Do this now — Google “Carbon Monoxide Deaths”. The numbers are rather shocking !
On another topic entirely, while we’ve all heard of “winter,” in meteorology there is another kind of winter, something we call meteorological winter, which is comprised of the coldest three months of the year. Those months are December, January and February. Well, the official numbers are in, and we just had the warmest meteorological winter on record at Caribou, where records began in 1939.
As for snow, it has been a paltry season following two generous ones. The normal for an entire snow season is about 108 inches. Last year 142 inches fell at Caribou and the year before, there was a hefty 150 inches. Last week, there was a 7.5 inch snowfall at Caribou on March 2nd, bringing the total to 67.7 inches, about 40 inches behind last year, and about 16 inches below normal.
One of the meteorologists at NWS Caribou put it best: “This year climatology is catching up with us.”
So, while this has been a rather poor winter for many who depend on snow for their livelihoods (there are some notable “good snow year” exceptions in parts of The Valley!), we all have enjoyed lower heating bills. Based on Heating Degree Days, an energy usage index, we have used about 15 percent less fuel than last winter, and in addition, fuel is significantly cheaper this year!
But don’t consider this year some new normal. My early chips are on a winter next year that would satisfy winter sports enthusiasts, from Weston (The County’s southernmost town) to Van Buren and back to the Allagash. Remember how cold last February (2015) was? And again, the last two winters have seen 142 and 150 inches, respectively. Eight years ago, Caribou fell just shy of an epic 200-inch year, coming in at 197.8”. The thirty-year average for Caribou is about 108 inches.
By the way, if I’ve not mentioned this before, the snow season runs from July 1st to June 30th of the following year. It is done this way to ensure capture of any exceptionally early or exceptionally late snowfalls.
I’ll close with an eye-opener. in April of 2007, Caribou had 29 inches of snow, and combining it with March that year, it was double nickels, 55 inches!
