BrianW

Skiing up at Bolton for a few days. Awesome skiing, weather, and the first time this winter I have seen a decent snowpack. Lol

Home Depot here has a huge fleet now of trucks and box vans they rent out dirt cheap. If I need a pickup or van I just rent one from there. Less than 40 bucks for 2 hours.

I have a newer style wood insert with the air tubes on top and its crazy how clean it burns. Its like a blowtorch on top that even burns most of he smoke. Your wood lasts so much longer as well.

Are tons of people still running those outdoor wood boilers up there. I saw one down here yesterday and the thing was choking out the entire valley it was in. The amount of low lingering smoke that thing made was unreal.

Noticed that here this morning as well on a hill nearby.

If I remember correctly you do snow removal. Do snow removal companies take a massive hit as there has been very little snow? Down here in CT there are front end loaders parked all over in parking lots that have not moved all winter. On a good note it looks like natural gas and heating oil have been plummeting in price.

3.5 here in Branford right on the shoreline. Quite the surge in temps earlier...

Getting smoked here as the last band moves through.

What a band just south of here on the sound...

Temperature just jumped 7 degrees from 22 to 29. Still moderate snow here.

Radar looks terrible. The heavy stuff seems to be south? Is it going to fill in?

95 is a mess already.

Its crazy down here along the CT shoreline. Most trees are budding and stuff is sprouting all over. I saw a bunch of dandelions today. Neighbor's were mowing their lawns on Sunday. My herb garden on my deck came back to life.

I just noticed the Vermont resorts are advertising like crazy on billboards along 95 in CT. I am pretty sure I drove by one that literally just said "We have snow in VT". Talking to people here many have the mindset that if there is now snow here there is none up there.

Just got a snow squall warning on my phone for Fairfield County Connecticut. Driving right into it on 95.

My maple trees have green buds on them and stuff is popping up in my flower beds down here on the CT coast..

Looks like the CT shoreline east of HVN might get in on this first band.

Down here on the CT shoreline my maple trees are budding and I got stuff sprouting in my flowerbeds...

Some interesting info on how their forecasts and data compares to the NWS.

Looks like IBM bought weather underground? The new ap is way better than the old version. The new temp map with the color is really cool.

How old is the house? Sounds like you have a well insulated newer house to have that fuel consumption. My sister is building a brand new house in Boston. The house is crazy insulated and airtight. The heating and cooling loss numbers were insane. Its going to cost practically nothing to heat and cool when I looked over the plans. Might have been much older mini splits. The stuff coming out in the last year or two are probably twice as efficient. The technology is rapidly advancing and getting more efficientl. I ran some numbers for Taunton MA. It looks like you have municipal power and pay significantly less than the rest of MA so your savings are pretty massive. At Taunton MA electric rates of .14 a kwh and the mass.gov posted average propane price of 2.92, here is what a million btus of heat would cost you. Heat pump- $9.33 Propane- $35.52 For others in MA here are the state wide average prices taken from the mass.gov website for comparision. Heat pump at .22kwh. $14.67 Heating oil $27.45 Propane- $35.52 Natural gas- $26.83 Natural gas is not cheap as cheap as it once was in New England and prices have doubled since the beginning of the year. There is not enough pipeline supply and a huge demand from gas power plants that prices have been high.

Maine is aggressively deploying heat pumps and has incentives for them. Here is an interesting article on it. Didn't realize they had soo many installed. I also attached a performance graph of how newer units can achieve some impressive cold weather performance. My unit can put out its full rated heat all the way to almost -20 before capacity drops. Maine is the most heating-oil-dependent state in the country. More than 60 percent of the state’s 550,000 households rely on heating oil as their primary energy source for heat. But because a little more than half of the electricity generated in Maine already comes from zero-carbon hydropower and wind power — and legislation signed yesterday sets a 100 percent renewable electricity target for 2050 — a rapid shift to electric heat could deliver significant emissions reductions. It should also save households and businesses money. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.greentechmedia.com/amp/article/maine-wants-to-install-100000-heat-pumps-by-2025