"The more I find out, the less I know."
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Weather at the Frozen North
This is my personal blog. My professional blog is The Customer Service Survey I've written a book called Gourmet Customer Service. You can buy it on Amazon. (in)Frequently Asked Questions AIM Screen Name: DFNfrozenNorth
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Last Updated: Aug 07, 2008 03:29 PM
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Friday - January 13, 2006 at 09:27 AM inJanuary Natural Gas Prices
Minnegasco has set its price for natural gas in January at $1.22/therm. That compares to $1.19 in December and $0.91 last year.
Fortunately, January so far has been unseasonably warm. The Star Tribune had a front-page article this morning about how this was the warmest start to winter every recorded in Minnesota. That's true if you measure it beginning on December 21st, the first official day of winter, but probably isn't true if you measure since the beginning of the heating season since we had that nasty cold snap the first few weeks of December. I'm expecting that our gas bill this month (due in about a week) will be very low, despite the high gas prices. Thanks to the warm weather and the wood burning stove, we've been running our furnace only modestly the past few weeks. It hasn't been completely turned off (the wood stove isn't that powerful), but the heat has been running far far less than it would have normally. The biggest issue right now is finding enough small pieces of very dry firewood for getting the stove started. We have to start the stove twice on most days (once in the morning, and again when we get home from work), and the most reliable way to do that is to load it with the smallest, driest pieces of wood we can find. Getting the stove started requires heating the entire 500-pound mass of the stove up to somewhere above 300 degrees. Once hot, the stove is reasonably happy with larger and somewhat damper wood. When we start the stove twice a day, we go through our supply of tinder very quickly, so I have to keep scouting for more tinder. What I really need to find is someone trying to get rid of a bunch of scrap lumber, like shipping palettes. But I don't have a ready supply at the moment. Posted at 09:27 AM | Permalink | | | |