Over the past several weeks, I have heard numerous comments, such as “I’ve never seen a winter like this”, (referring to the relatively light seasonal snow total). Well as it turns out, there have been several such snowfall seasons over the years.
At this Ides of March writing, Caribou stands at 70.9 inches for the 2015-16 snow season. Back in the winter of 1961-62, Caribou had 68.5 inches for the entire season. In 2009-10, while the mid-Atlantic states were crushing their records for most snow in a season, Caribou only had 70.3”. The winter of 1979-80 saw a seasonal total of 70.6”, and way back in 1950-51 there was a seasonal total of 72.6”. Normal for Caribou is about 108 inches and last year Caribou saw just over 140 inches.
Back to the mid-Atlantic snow blitz of 2009-10. I am from a community just south of Alexandria, Virginia, and in that year, my brother, who still resides there, recorded 74 inches and, get this, the average in Alexandria is only 16 inches! And how about this: Alexandria, Virginia received more snow that winter than Caribou did!
I suspect we’ll have to wait a long, long time to see that again!
On to another topic. Now that Daylight Saving Time has arrived, I thought it would be a good time to go back and review the heart of our heating season, November through February, because as we are all well aware, it has been, heating cost-wise, an easy winter indeed!
As I’ve written before, temperature can be translated into a good general overview of energy usage, which has kind of a weird name, Heating Degree Days. If you have missed the explanation of how to compute them, here it is again. All you do is add the day’s high and low and divide by 2. Example: High of 30, Low of 10. 30 + 10 = 40. 40 divided by 2 is 20. So our example day had an average temperature of 20. But to get Heating Degree Days for that day, there is one more step. Take the average, and subtract it from 65. So, in our example, 65-20=45. That day would be said to have had 45 Heating Degree Days.
The larger the HDD value, the more energy you used to keep the indoor temperature at 65, a value below which it is assumed most folks would turn on some heat. (This is why 65 is used)
So, with that out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks. In my last column, I addressed HDD all the way back to July 1, which is when the HDD season starts. But now I want to look directly at the core of our heating season.
This year, November 2015 through February 2016, the aggregate HDD figure (simply adding all of the HDD values of each day together) was almost 20 percent lower than last year (November 2014 through February 2015). This means that if you think in, let’s say, units of 10 logs, then for every 10 logs you burned last November through February, you only burned eight logs this November through February. And, an additional bonus is that fuel prices came down considerably as well.
So a whole lot of County folks saved a whole lot of money in household heating costs this winter!
Ted Shapiro holds the Broadcast Seal of Approval from both the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association. An Alexandria, Va. native, he has been chief meteorologist at WAGM-TV since 2006. Email him at tshapiro@wagmtv.com.
