As standard at this season, we await day-to-day the freeze-up of the immense physique of water that's our front yard. With that ice formed, and soon thick enough for walking, and then for working dogteams and skidoos, after which - at a mere eight inches - for landing and taking off in small airplanes, the winter here will actually begin. "Near Gale" stated the wind chart tacked to the wall above the weather clipboard, the other day. The anemometer read 19 knots gusting to 27, and for the reason that actual instrument is down at lake level, I’m giving us a knot to make the gusts 28, and a "near gale." Within the darkness before daybreak, it certain sounded and felt like one thing close to to a gale. Lately, in the morning darkness around an hour before twilight, I’ve taken to bundling up in a floor-length woolen robe with an ample hood - assume monk or penitent and you've got the suitable thought - slipping my naked toes into slippers, and stepping outside onto the upper deck that wraps around the cabin.

I gingerly make my solution to whatever is the lee aspect. There to stand and sip some hot espresso and listen and watch. On a morning throughout that protracted southwesterly blow, I took inventory of the scene. High crescent moon, waning, shiny shining through damaged cloud. Stars winking on and off as flecks of cloud rushed past. Roar of the surf breaking on the ice edge only some yards out from the shore. Hot flecks of stove ember whipping downwind from the chimney top like tiny meteors, with the slotted stovepipe cap organising a venturi in winds like this, sucking air up the flue and making it nearly not possible to damp a fireplace completely down. A wind like this, coming straight at us proper off the chilly lake, can get wearisome here after a day or so, but in a sensible sense a stiff wind is most welcome at this season. A three-day wind is a present within the lighting and charging department.

Of course the freezers are turned off now, until April, but the times are quick and the lights are on for hours. The fridge will soon turn out to be a true "ice-box" with gallon jugs of ice shuttled in and out from the porch, and the power to it will be cut way back. The windmill on a tall mast out on the rocky level (some years an island, some years a peninsula) has been cranking out electricity for the reason that blow started. The meter on the wall reveals a tally for a 24-hour period and this morning it read 5.6 KwH. At the moment of the year, our motto is "anything for an amp." Traipse down to the workshop to shut the inverter fully off at night time, quite than just letting it "sleep" on Power Save mode. Sneaky appliances - even when sleeping they still suck a little bit juice, until you minimize them proper off at the swap. What is laughable about our power scenario, although, is that a three-day blow like we simply had gets us actually jazzed up about having brought in, oh, official Alpha Heater site possibly 10 or 12 kilowatt-hours.

Enough to run the place for a couple of total days, with out fussing with the generator. And yet, in town or down south or wherever but means off the grid, a free present of 10 or 12 kilowatt-hours is extra like someone buying you a small cup of coffee. Or in different words, exciting but fairly extraordinary, by way of value financial savings. The opposite day a report on the radio got us talking about the price of electricity. Power payments are soon to go up again in the Northwest Territories, and although that may don't have any impact on our state of affairs right here on the Hoarfrost River, it was all the buzz in town for a few days, official Alpha Heater site I gather. It sounds as if a kilowatt hour might enhance in cost to someplace near thirty or forty cents, throughout the North, when all is alleged and achieved. Kilowatt-hours. What the heck is a kilowatt-hour?

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Pub: 27 Nov 2025 22:28 UTC

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