irielife.net

The weatherpeople on our local TV news stations have been all atwitter this past week with the threat of snow finally becoming a reality. The past couple of winters were pretty action-packed, but this one has so far been a dud. And competition is a wonderful thing. Most stations are trying to keep us glued to our sets with ominous warnings about possible snow and ice and promises of segments teaching us how to cope with the cold, while at least one radio station promised not to succumb to “the fearmongering going on on the TV stations”.

Judging from the picture on the right, the weatherpeople on TV have got to be pretty disappointed. It did indeed snow last nite — it was just a pathetic little dusting, but it was exciting nonetheless. The kids were disappointed. Camryn really wants a white Christmas. We’ll keep hoping…

So far it has mostly just been bitterly cold. Like below-zero cold. We’ve never seen anything like this, not even while living in Utah. Last night about 1 a.m. I jumped out of bed after smelling something burning. I searched frantically through the house looking for the source. After finding the kids were okay, and that nothing downstairs was on fire, I checked the thermostat. Turns out our heat pump has an electric backup heater. When it’s so cold outside that the heat pump can’t extract any heat from the air (Dad will explain), a backup circuit kicks in and turns on an electric heating circuit. It almost never gets cold enough to need this, so I guess the burning smell was that of gunk burning off an unused heating element.

Oh, how we miss California at this time of year!!