It has been cold here for the last couple of days. We have been stoking up the wood stove, but with the strong wind, the house cools off enough at night that by morning the heat usually comes on.
A new stray dog has been roaming around, eating cat food and keeping a good distance between any himself and any human. We put a plastic dog house out for him (her?) but he’s too skittish to get into it. We have started putting dog food out, hoping he will stop eating the cat food. Instead, of course, he eats the dog food and then the cat food. We have been worried about the dog staying out overnight in this weather, but he seems to have survived the coldest night so far.
The cats seem to have found their places. This is where Leah has set up a nice cat den under the stoop in the garage.
Sylvester slept here sometimes before it got so cold. Now he comes inside. So do Chloe and Smokey.
We put a two-story cat house in the driveway with a nice covered porch and a lot of cedar shavings. Some cat or cats have been sleeping there, but Leah was afraid it was too cold, so we put a cat house made from a cardboard box in the garage. Leah put a comforter in it, and Rusty often can be found there. Dusty occasionally lies in it, too.
I had to take this picture from a distance to avoid spooking the cats, so the flash didn’t do much to light them. That tail end is Dusty’s. The front end is Rusty’s.
For the really cold weather – Wednesday night it went down to 10F (about -12C) — we got a heated pet pad for the box. It doesn’t really feel warm to the touch, but it’s supposed to heat up to a cat-friendly temperature as they lie on it. Rusty has been in there, but Dusty, unfortunately, seems not to use it. We aren’t sure where he sleeps. We suspect he’s spending time in our driveway culvert, but we hope not. We also suspect that Sylvester and Smokey chase him out of the garage, and sometimes even away from a nice spot in the sun.
Lucy and Zeke have coats, but Thursday morning I cut our walk short because with the wind it was just too cold. Friday, even though it was a few degrees warmer, I left Lucy at home. It was about 19F (about -7F), but with only light wind, it was bearable for Zeke and me.
Which brings me to the wind chill factor. Wind chill factor seems to have been designed especially to let TV weathermen spread panic. OK, that might be extreme. They only try to enhance the public’s perception of the severity of the risk of cold weather.
The idea of a wind chill temperature has been around for more than 70 years, and it has been criticized for various reasons for about as long as it has existed. I personally don’t like wind chill or its warm-weather opposite, the heat index, or the “feels like temperature.” The biggest criticism of wind chill has been that it overstates the coldness. I think in some circumstances it does the opposite. For example, I have been outside while visiting friends in Colorado on a clear, still night when the temperature was -5F (about -20C) and it did not seem extraordinarily cold. I was not prepared to strip to my skivvies and snow ski, but it was not unreasonable to spend some time outside. On the other hand, I have been outside when the temperature was near 15F (about -9C) with a strong wind (15F with 30 mph wind gives a -5F wind chill), and it was nearly unbearable.
I think the heat index temperature is even less realistic. If the temperature is 90F (32C) with a relative humidity of 65%, the heat index is 103 (expressed as a Fahrenheit temperature). I have suggested that a test of that is to pick such a day and sit outside while you turn your house thermostat to 103 and give your house a chance to warm up. Then go inside and see whether it feels the same as outside.
I’m sure there are benefits to telling people that weather conditions may be so extreme as to pose some potential danger if you’re not prepared. But the biggest benefit seems to be to the TV weather forecaster.
It was snowing as I wrote this earlier Friday evening. After dinner, Leah and I drove down the mountain to eat and go to the grocery store. There was about a quarter to a half an inch of snow on the road. That doesn’t sound like much, but when it’s melted and refrozen, it turns into a thin layer of ice. That was enough that one car was in a ditch about seven miles from home, and we had to stop going up the mountain to let someone turn around to go back down. We had no trouble. Just a couple of days ago we traded our front-wheel-drive Volkswagen for an all-wheel-drive Subaru. Just what I wanted it for.
It was -5 degrees F here in the northern Piedmont on Friday morning when I awoke, Mark, and the wind was blowing strongly. Our cats definitely stay indoors. Two weeks ago, I twice saw a “new” black cat wandering around the property, but I haven’t seen it again since it’s been really cold. I don’t know what happened to it; maybe it’s just holed up somewhere and will reappear when/if the weather breaks.
Stray cats around here used not to last very long because they’d be scarfed-up in no time by coyotes, but the coyote population has crashed (because of mange). I guess we’ll be seeing more forlorn cats.
Our homeowners association at our Colorado retirement house says that they “assume that every resident has at least one 4WD vehicle” for use during inclement weather. (There’s 12-21 inches of snow forecast there this weekend, so we’d need 4WD if we were living there.) I’ve been looking at Subarus (especially Foresters) to replace our 1988 Dodge Caravan (with only 60,000 original miles), but I’m really hoping I can keep the Caravan going for 3 more years, and that by then Subaru will have a decent hybrid available.
You are both so kind to all the animals. Any creature that crosses path with you two is very, very lucky. I hope that stray doggie finds its way back home, and all the kitty cats stay warm.
I love the heat index test. I hope someone will try it. I don’t know why weather forecasters are so hyped up all the time, but they definitely go a bit overboard.
We loved our four-wheel drive Subaru. It was perfect for driving the snowy roads in the foothills. Now that we are back on the coast and in a temperate climate zone, we gave the car to Roger’s daughter and settled in with a Prius.
Just as you can tell when the wind is blowing that it’s much much worse outside – Thursday it was about 13 and windy and it HURT to be outside. But 5 and calm on Friday wasn’t as bad. Same thing with the heat index. Your house is likely to be warm but dry. Outside, around here, it’s the humidity that makes breathing hard and the day unbearable. I don’t know about the exact numbers, but wind or humidity definitely needs to be factored in.
Scott — You don’t drive that car much, do you? We thought our 2011 VW with only 27,000 miles was low mileage. So far we like the Subaru a lot. We ended up with the Legacy, but the Forester was a close second. If we needed to face a foot of snow, it would have been our first choice.
Robin — I thought I remembered that you all had a Subaru. It has been kind of funny that right after we got a 4WD truck, I had to drive from work in Huntsville back home through snow that stopped nearly everyone else. And then if we had not had the Subaru the other night, we probably would have had to park at the bottom of the mountain and walk home. So, despite living in the South, it doesn’t seem too hard to justify it.
Ridger — I agree completely. My real complaint is about the attempt to assign a “temperature” to the wind/cold and humidity/heat conditions. I think some kind three-stage warning about dangerously cold conditions would make more sense than trying to say that a particular combination of temperature and wind speed is in some way equivalent to a different temperature with no wind. It just isn’t. Same goes for heat and humidity.