A bit chilly

It's been a while since I've blogged. I could say that while trying not to complain about the weather, I haven't been left with much else to say. However, the rain and sleet finally went over to snow a few days ago. We have about 6 inches of snow now, which is just fine with me. It's enough that everything is beautiful and white but not so much that it's really in the way. The roads are slick, but driving is still quite possible and the drifts are not enough to block the roads.

While it's not unusual that it snows here in November, it is unusual that the snow sticks for any length of time. It now seems obvious to everyone that we're in for a long and cold winter. According to US websites, they've been aware of the North Atlantic Oscillation (the same weather pattern we had which made for a rough winter last year) for a month already. I'm surprised that that didn't make the news here. Perhaps it would make the Swedish weather service look bad were anyone to mistrust them enough to look for a second opinion. Or perhaps it's news that Swedes just don't want to hear.

Electricity prices are sky high, so we're trying not to resort to the electric space heaters yet. The heat exchange system we installed a few years ago is dimensioned for having in-floor heating. Unfortunately our remodeling project has only come so long that we have this in two rooms. The rest of the house still has the old fashioned radiators, thus there is not enough heat to go around. Without supplemental heat, the heat exchanger keeps the house at about 15 C (59 F). Brrrrrrr! Thank goodness for the wood burning stove! At least it gets one end of the house nice and warm.

So why are electricity prices so high? Apparently water reserves are low in the major reservoirs because Sweden sold a lot of water based electricity to Norway over the summer. Norway of course has their own water power plants, but they were refilling their reserves so they'd have plenty for the winter. Sweden's not entirely dependent on water power; there are also some nuclear power plants. Last year, it was a big scandal that just in time for the hard winter, the plants were at only 50% output because they were down for maintenance. Did they learn anything from this? Apparently they learned that they can make a lot of money by jacking up the electricity prices when demand is high and the supply is low, because this year they are at only 40% output due to scheduled maintenance. Don't even suggest doing maintenance during the summer, because everyone's on vacation then. The worst thing about getting screwed by the power company is that it is government owned!