wood supply/ proportion of heating season left?

[pybyr]

I recall that NoFo, who has lots of knowledge and experience (and equally abundant generosity in sharing it) has previously put up some posts that, as of the date of those posts, we were approximately X% of the way through the heating season, and so should, hopefully, have proportional amounts of remaining wood.

Can NoFo or someone else give us an update on approximately where we stand right now? That way, instead of pondering my remaining woodpile with abstract vague [but mild] worry, I can either recalibrate to full panic (and appropriate action of lining up some more wood] or else chill out...

And also even a methodology to "teach us to fish" so that we can get the pertinent data and do future calculations ourselves in the future?

Thanks!

 

[DaveBP]

Heating Degree Day totals give a pretty good approximation. That's what the oil company uses to time automatic delivery schedules.

Here in my area in S. Maine we average about 7000 Degree Days per season. The local Portland paper publishes a weather almanac each sunday and the degree days to date numbers are there along with other data. I already kindled last sunday's paper but I remember we were up to about 4100 or so here. So maybe about 60% done here. Your local paper or the National Weather Service website might have similar numbers. You do need to know your average season total. I haven't seen much more than about 5% variation from the historical average here in my corner of Maine over the years.

I think if you have significant solar input the greater sun heat as it rises higher across the sky might help bail you out toward the end of the season. The Degree Day totals don't reflect solar input, just air temperature.

 

[Nofossil]

I use www.wunderground.com - they have an almanac that's buried in the clutter on the left side of the page. It has daily, weekly, and monthly data, and you can get data for any day. Using that, I get about 7000 degree days average by April 15th. By today we would get about 5300 on average - almost exactly 75% of the way through. As noted above, more favorable sun angles this time of year reduce heating load below what the temperature would suggest.

 

[chuck172]

I use Nov.1 as the start, April 1 as the end of the heating season.
Jan. 15 being the mid-point.
Aprox. 150 heating degrees total.
We used up 110 days, which comes out to 3/4 of the season over. Just as NoFossil says.