For the skeptics about wood splitting easier in cold weather, it sure does.
The forecast for Interior Alaska is that the cold snap is expected to continue for another week with still lower temps toward the end of the week. Been in it for a week. Cold snaps that last for more than a couple of days have become very infrequent and this one is getting to be unusually long.
The high today was -46 F (these are official temps at the nearby airstrip). the low last night was -51. All but one of the lows for the past several days have been colder than -40 and the high later today is predicted to be -50. It's -50 now and dropping very slowly. There is little solar heating and only several degrees difference between the daily high and the night's low. My wood pile is going down fast but the good news is that the splitting is easy. It almost pops apart. When it gets up into the "30's", a lot of folks will be out in the woods and cutting more. There probably won't be a standing birch left for a long ways and the dead spruces are long gone. It was a symphony of chain saws around town bucking up wood a few days ago. No one complains just because their neighbors were cutting wood at 2 am.
The forecast for Interior Alaska is that the cold snap is expected to continue for another week with still lower temps toward the end of the week. Been in it for a week. Cold snaps that last for more than a couple of days have become very infrequent and this one is getting to be unusually long.
The high today was -46 F (these are official temps at the nearby airstrip). the low last night was -51. All but one of the lows for the past several days have been colder than -40 and the high later today is predicted to be -50. It's -50 now and dropping very slowly. There is little solar heating and only several degrees difference between the daily high and the night's low. My wood pile is going down fast but the good news is that the splitting is easy. It almost pops apart. When it gets up into the "30's", a lot of folks will be out in the woods and cutting more. There probably won't be a standing birch left for a long ways and the dead spruces are long gone. It was a symphony of chain saws around town bucking up wood a few days ago. No one complains just because their neighbors were cutting wood at 2 am.