Winter so far

Winter in New Hampshire’s Great North Woods hasn’t been bad at all this year. In spite of the polar vortex temperatures haven’t been awful. In fact, while we’ve had plenty of subzero temperatures, they pale in comparison to decades ago. Back then it would not be uncommon for a week where it never got above zero. -30 used to be common and -40 not unheard of. It never got that cold this winter.

Going into the fall we were in a slight drought condition. The northern part of the state received a lot of rain just before the freeze, bringing us out of drought. Snowfall, for this time of year, is moderate. Of course, we could get buried in snow during the month of March. It’s happened often enough in the past.  On the bright side there should be enough snow melt to keep ground water levels up.

Our solar electric system has significant battery storage. We can go some time without the grid or sun. Before every storm the battery bank was topped off from the grid. Even with heavy snowfall we’ve only lost the grid for short periods of time. It appears the utilities have done a good job preparing. Aggressive tree pruning has kept a lot of problems away. The times we lost the grid were generally due to collisions with power poles. Power was restored within hours.

The Internet has sometimes been slow and would go down for short periods of time. This seems to correlate with everyone working and schooling from home. It also gets hammered pretty hard after dinner time. While that’s been annoying, the problems are relatively minor -for someone not needing full time service.

Thanks to being  isolated and avoiding people, we’ve been pretty healthy over all. I get more exercise when we travel south to warm weather. Part of the problem this year is that I injured my knees and they took a long time to get better. I’m finally getting back into walking.

Snow shoveling has provided a fair bit of exercise. Fortunately, I’m retired and don’t have to be anywhere in a hurry. If I take three days to shovel everything out, that’s fine. Often I’d only shovel a walkway and dig out the mailbox the first day. Digging out a car could wait.

I know it’s been a tough time for a lot of people, but we’ve been in pretty good shape. Personally, I’m comfortable living like a hermit. At least we aren’t putting a strain on the systems that other people need to get by.

-Sixbears