Halloween is coming up! This means trick-or-treating with your kids, costume parties, and heating oil season! Halloween marks the unofficial start of heating oil season! This is around the time temperatures start to get colder, which causes us to turn on our heating systems and start burning oil! If you haven’t already, now’s the time when you’re going to need to turn on your system. If you’ve got plans for Halloween this weekend, then you might already have started preparing for that! But don’t forget about your heating oil usage, because your upcoming plans might affect your usage!
Outside Temperatures On and After Halloween
While September 22nd marks the official start of fall, the cold temperatures outside start to creep up on you towards mid to late October. Fall last year started pretty warm, but then we got slammed by two major snowstorms in the winter!
However, temperatures outside on and around Halloween can tend to be a little erratic. Most of the time, the weather will tend to be cool. Between 30 and 55 degrees seems to be the sweet spot. However, if you have plans to go trick-or-treating with your family, keep an eye on the weather! One year when I was a kid, we got completely rained out! Due to these chilly temperatures, you might see yourself starting to burn oil during this time!
Shifting Prices
Halloween is the last day in October, which means that this is when temperatures start to get cold. This is also around the time oil dealers start to increase prices. When it starts to get cold outside, heating oil becomes more in demand than it was in September. You’re going to want to be warm once it starts getting cold out! Oil companies know that, and they will start to slowly increase their prices as we make our way into the winter. Especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas! That’s when prices tend to get the most expensive! But you can always check prices on FuelSnap to know when they’re the cheapest!
Around Halloween, though, is when the prices start to shift. Whether it starts to get cold out is when the prices begin to change. But some Halloweens can be colder than others! Back in 2011, we had gotten a nor’easter on Halloween! Heating Oil was being burned, and we had no power! We had a total of 12-18 inches of snowfall that Halloween. But during the Pandemic, Halloween was a freezing 21 degrees outside!
Do Halloween Parties Increase Usage?
While you might see some drastic changes in usage around Thanksgiving and Christmas, it can vastly depend on what you’re doing. For example, if you’re just going trick-or-treating with your family and then coming right home, your usage might be relatively low. But if you’re having a Halloween Party or Costume party, then your usage might be much higher than it’d normally be based on the number of people coming. The larger the gathering, the more oil you could see yourself using!
But if you’re having a couple of people over, say a family friend and their kids, or even just some of your kids’ friends for trick-or-treating and a party, your usage could be mild or high! Outdoor activities such as pumpkin carving, apple dunking, or even other general outdoor activities could help mitigate your usage slightly!
Halloween is the Unofficial Start to Heating Oil Season
While there’s no official start to heating oil season, it tends to be between September and October. However, Halloween tends to be the threshold for when prime season begins. This is around the time of year when temperatures get colder, so heating oil prices and usage increase slowly over time before we get into peak season in mid to late November and into December! But Halloween is on the horizon, and temperatures are pretty mild right now. So be sure to enjoy whatever you’re doing this Halloween, and be sure to make the most of it!
Happy Halloween!
Hunter
