Albany NY Monthly Heating Degree Days Data

This table shows monthly heating degree days for the Albany NY area from January 2000 through June 2008. The term heating degree days is defined below.

NOTE Now that I've retired and travel full time in my RV (My Lazy Daze) and no longer spend winters in NY I'm discontinuing the updating of this table. The data this table is based on is available at the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center Degree Days Statistics website.

For several years I've been collecting heating degree day information for the Albany, NY area (the closest data I found to the Chatham area where I live) and tabulating the trends monthly and as a 12 month moving average to get a feel for how much my heating fuel needs vary from season to season and how far above or below normal the current usage might be.

	2008	2007	2006	2005	2004	2003	2002	2001	2000	Normal
January	1156	1160	1031	1404	1561	1512	1036	1246	1368	1257
February	1114	1275	1040	1061	1162	1262	927	1060	1077	1070
March	955	1027	895	1049	839	950	885	1048	762	889
April	394	622	462	440	486	612	511	522	585	528
May	300	196	232	325	154	253	326	202	209	220
June	17	40	43	6	54	46	51	46	74	42
July		7	0	0	3	0	4	21	14	4
August		25	17	1	25	9	9	0	25	13
September		86	130	58	79	91	69	116	207	124
October		271	500	410	464	519	538	407	456	463
November		816	608	674	764	677	790	607	801	741
December		1146	918	1179	1157	1103	1177	954	1323	1085
TOTAL		6671	5876	6607	6748	7034	6323	6219	6901	6438

Heating Season	Total
2000-2001	6950
2001-2002	5841
2002-2003	7222
2003-2004	6655
2004-2005	6777
2005-2006	6025
2006-2007	6493
2007-2008	6287
Normal	6438

Note: Normal is a 30-year degree day average value for the period 1971-2000.

Source: National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center Degree Days Statistics

Albany NY Heating Degree Days 12 month moving average shows the data above charted as a 12 month moving average.

Heating degree days

Heating degree days is a way to keep track of the relative amount of energy needed to heating a building (or buildings). The cooler the weather, the larger the number of heating degree days... and the larger the number of heating degree days, the larger the amount of energy needed to heat a building (or buildings).

How heating degree days are calculated

The number of heating degree days for any particular day is the average temperature for the day subtracted from a base value of 65 degrees F. The average temperature for the day is calculated by adding the high temperature for the day to the low temperature for the day and dividing the sum by 2.

Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize

The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.

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