Apr 28 2009
What are Cooling and Heating Degree Days?
With the unusual warm weather we have had in the past few days here in New England, I thought that a good topic for today would be cooling and heating degree days – what are they? Here is a short explanation from the archives of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Each degree of a day’s average temperature above 65F is considered on cooling degree day, an attempt to measure the need for air-conditioning. If the average of day’s high and low temperature is 75F, then that is ten cooling degree days.
Similarly, each degree of a day’s average temperature below 65F is considered one heating degree day and is an attempt to measure the need for fuel consumption. Using the above example, this time using the average of the day’s high and low temperature is 45F, then the heating degree days would be 20.
It takes a lot more than that for me to need air conditioning. I like to be warm!