January Thaw

January 10, 2018

For two days now, the thermometer has pegged in above freezing, and the forecast is for another two days of the same before the next cold front takes us back into the single digits. When I was a kid, it was called the January Thaw; today it’s Climate Change. Who knows? Our last president assured us that Climate Change was “settled science,” which revealed how little he actually knew about science, which is never settled unless there is government money to be had. It could be; but I’m not ready yet to bet the farm on conclusions that are tied to government policy and money. In both religion and science, the prognosticators’ track record leaves much to be desired.

I’ll take the thaw, by whatever name we call it. The heavy snowfalls and below-freezing temperatures have resulted in about two feet of snow on our roof, and some of that atop a foot of ice. Therein lies the rub. When we spent beaucou bucks on the spray insulation for our house, the contractor told me that with the kind of snowfalls we get around here, we wanted the insulation on the attic floor instead of on the underside of the roof like I wanted. We heeded his expert professional opinion, and are blessed in return with massive icicles. To be fair, the ones in the entry room aren’t his fault. When the house was re-roofed before we bought it, the contractor insulated the entry room with fiberglass batts. He didn’t get something right, because we get ice dams in the corners that back up and leak through the ceiling and walls, dripping like a forest after a rain. We could have paper boat races on the floor.

So I’m thankful tonight for the thaw. It should melt most of the ice off the roof preparatory to round #2. Fortunately, the ceiling in the entry room is knotty pine, so once things dry out, all will be well. And when spring comes, I’ll have to crawl into the space above the ceiling to see what we can do about better trapping the heat so we don’t have to repeat this again next winter. If the tides start inundating our coastal cities, I guess we in Western New York will have to shoulder our share of the blame for praying for a bit of moderation in the winters around here. Mea Culpa.