For the most part, central Florida winter weather is great. Unfortunately, there will be a few times during the season when the temperatures drop below freezing, or even a little above that for several days. I was going to refer to this as ‘cold’ weather but I was raised in Chicago and I watch the national weather to see sub-zero weather with feet of snow piling up.

So, it’s not a major threat to survival when the temps drop below 70 but I did discover something recently. Normally, I’m very frugal when it comes to running the furnace or electric heaters (when I’m paying for my own utilities). If the temps drop into the 30s or even high 20s overnight, I usually deal with it by wearing extra layers inside the RV and throwing an extra blanket on the bed at night. In the morning, I’ll run the furnace for 15-20 minutes just to take the chill off, then wait for the temps to rise to a comfortable level. This has worked fine in the past but in the last few weeks we were getting the low temps at night and not going above 50 during the day.

In my eBook, Home Is Where The Wheels Stop, I mention that fatigue is cumulative. Well, it looks like cold is also. Going into the second night of cold temps, I actually set the thermostat so the furnace would kick in periodically during the night and, perhaps more amazingly, left the furnace on during the day. I had the thermostat set low so I wasn’t burning a lot of propane. But as the cool weather continued I found myself adjusting the thermostat up each day even though the outside temps were still in the same range. Maybe the cold is cumulative, or maybe I’m just getting older and not able to handle it as well. One of my neighbors is significantly older and I can still hear their furnace running, even on nights when I leave my windows open.