Remember Your Bandwidth

Bandwidth directly correlates to backup and disaster recovery. The need for internet speed is going to keep increasing as more people adopt cloud strategies and move their CRMs, accounting, servers, and more to the cloud. These services are mission critical. In order to make these work, more bandwidth is necessary to create more efficiency.
The need for more bandwidth goes hand in hand with having a good backup and disaster recovery plan. Having a failover – additional connection – gives additional protection. Planning for future growth with additional bandwith is just as important as establishing a good disaster recovery plan.

Lower Heating Prices

From CNBC

Lower heating prices
A drop in energy costs is good news for consumers as the temperatures fall. Most households may only see $20 to $30 in savings on their heating bills this season compared to last winter, but some customers could see a nearly $800 drop in their overall heating costs, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
More than a third of U.S. households use natural gas to heat their homes and the price of that fuel is likely to be higher than last winter (electricity prices, which follow natural gas, are on the rise too), but the forecast for milder temperatures should mean overall consumption for the heating season–and your bill–will be lower than last year. If you’re in the Northeast and use heating oil or propane to heat your home, you could see a 15-percent drop in your winter heating bill versus last winter. Propane users in the Midwest may pay the most in the country to heat their homes, but with the drop in propane prices, the overall cost will be about 30 percent less than last year, according to the EIA.

Could We Have a Cold Stormy October

John Bolaris, For Philly.com
Last updated: Thursday, October 2, 2014,

Signs of significant to major changes should take place across our region as we move through October with periodic chilly shots and increasingly stormy weather.

Two key players we always watch as we head into the winter season are the North Atlantic Oscillation better known simply as NAO and Arctic Oscillation (AO). We monitor both as they play a very important role in forecasting storm and cold cycles.

I won’t get meteorological-crazy on you, so I will keep it simple. When the NAO is in the negative phase, it’s usually a precursor for increasing storm chances for the Northeast. During the winter season I use this phrase, “When NAO is negative, think snow; when positive, less snow.”

Right now, forecasting models are indicating that NAO is going sharply negative for the month of October, especially by mid-October. But since it’s extremely rare to get snow in October, we are looking for more in the way of storms – not snow. Although I would not be surprised if the first wet flakes of the season fall in the Poconos sometime in mid- to late October.

The same can be said for the Arctic oscillation. When snow cover builds across the Northwest territories of Canada it creates high pressure, better known as Arctic air masses. This leads to a better chance of below-normal temperatures invading the Northeast. AO is also divided into positive and negative phases, as is North Atlantic Oscillation.

Negative phase with AO also leads to the better chances of cold and snow in the Northeast. During extreme negative phases, NAO and AO led to record snows in the past. The winter of 2009-10 was the snowiest winter of all-time in Philly with an incredible 78.7 inches; it was mainly attributed to record-setting negative AO and strongly negative NAO.

For this weekend, a strong cold front will produce a band of rain and perhaps scattered storms for Saturday morning into the early afternoon, followed by a chilly pop Saturday night (Poconos will drop into the 30s). Sunday will see a cool wind.

Look for a stormy period between Oct. 13-15, followed by a chilly blast with the first possible frost of the season.

My long-range winter outlook for 2014-15 comes out right around Oct. 31, so stay tuned.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/Bolaris_Cold_stormy_October_on_tap.html#txEoyGfh8OVprZPi.99

Our Perspective:

The energy market is waiting with baited breath on the long term winter forecast. After surviving the hurricane season all eyes are looking to see how cold it may be this winter. This may be the first sign.

Outr