Yep. It's Cold (Weather/Logging Geekery)

I doubt that my level of geekery will surprise any of my readers, but here is data I have been recording of my apartment (bedroom) temperature with matching weather data (from the University's weather station).



It covers December and the beginning of January; it includes both the end of the term, and the time I was away from home. You can easily tell that stretch--I had the heat completely turned off, so the temperature shows much less variation (i.e., I turn heat on and off if I am in the room). However, even with the heat off, it only drops to the low 40's--no risk of freeze up. But remember: I'm in an apartment on top of another (heated) unit; don't try this at home, kids. You can also tell the neat phase-shift and damping caused by the thermal mass of the building--a spike or drop in outdoor temperature is echoed a bit later inside.

I cranked the heat all the way into the high 60's at times--yeah, I know, pretty wussy. However, I should probably move the temperature measurement location--it is on a shelf above the radiator. I run the kitchen consistently at 50-60 F.

Incidentally, if any of you have random logging projects that you'd like to play with, I strongly recommend the equipment from Onset Computer--relatively low cost, completely intuitive computer interface. It is the equipment I'm using for these measurements. They even have stuff that records motor on/off runtimes, based on either vibration or AC field. In case you're wondering, I'm using one of these to measure T/RH in my apartment.



The second thing I wanted to do was compare the weather between Boston and Waterloo. I have always felt like Waterloo was noticeably colder, but I wanted data to demonstrate how much: as the magnet on my filing cabinet puts it:



So yeah: Waterloo is definitely colder. As you would expect for a location that is away from the tempering effect of the ocean (i.e., large thermal mass that is not frozen). In case you didn't know this, the latitude difference is pretty small (Waterloo is equivalent in latitude to Portland, ME). It seems like there is often a 10 F difference between the two, but there are times when temperatures overlap.

Also, it is interesting to note that some weather patterns come to Boston with about 12-24 hours delay: take a look at the temperature drop on 12/11 and 12/12, or 1/6 and 1/7, for instance.

In terms of adjusting to climate: being around freezing nowadays feels completely balmy to me--just requires a bit of layering up. When it gets down to the 10-15 F range, that's when life sucks. You can see this happens more often up here in the great white North, eh?