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.