But How Do You Feel? Part 2: The Kookiness of Qualitative Calculations

Think the 102ºF temperature in Queens on Wednesday was hot? Well, that may have been the actual temperature but my weatherman told me it really “felt like” it was 115ºF.

I hate TV weather forecasts. Like most people, I watch them almost every day so I know what to wear, but a few things about them enrage me all out of proportion. 1) Endless talk about “what the temperature should be today” when they mean average. 2) Hyping weather extremes; how predicted snowfalls, for example, become less and less as a storm nears. 3) Eyewitness weather. If we’re getting lots of rain or snow, I can see it from my window. You don’t need to hustle your reporters to seven local communities to show me the weather there.

And, the subject of this post, 4) Wind chills and heat indices. That is, “what it feels like,” according to the weather folks. These distortions of the temperature just drive me fucking crazy. I suppose they are just a special case of point 2, but they are so common and so aggravating, that I am giving them their own special category.

Smack the link for the smackdown. GRRRRR!

I understand the point of these hand-waving distortions of the outside temperature. Both are designed to capture some of the effects related to the dynamism of the weather system, particularly as it relates to moisture. When the cold wind blows, it strips away the insulating layer of air that surrounds us, bringing new, cold air into contact with our skin; the wind also speeds up evaporative cooling. When the heat that surrounds us is extra-steamy, the humidity slows down that evaporative cooling.

But the fact remains that they don’t change the objective temperature. The wind can whip up as high as it wants, but that air is the same temperature as it would be if it was still. Really, wind chill is an indicator of rate of heat loss; windy days just reduce the temperatures of things faster. But those things can never go below the ambient temp. Likewise, humidity doesn’t change the air temperature when it is hot, it just slows down how your body cools itself.

My biggest gripe is that these measures are so subjective. Let’s say it is 15ºF outside. Like anyone, I cringe when the teeth of a cold blast of air bite into my cheeks and they feel like they are in 0ºF weather. But maybe then the gust dies down, and my cheeks feel—still cold, mind you—a bit better. Then maybe the clouds part, and the sun warms my face, and I find it “feels like” it is warmer than the actual air temperature. Yet the only measure of subjectivity we gravitate to is the scary extreme one.

My second complaint is that these measures are unnecessary. When the temperature is either really hot or really cold, a reading of the air temperature contains enough information. Pulling down the low or pushing up the high doesn’t really matter. In the above example, 15ºF is still damn cold. No one should go into that weather without some attention to protecting themselves against it. Dramatizing the cold by making it seem colder helps no one.

Finally, I simply hate that drama, the self-importance of the weatherman who tells you that, although it is 95ºF, [now looking into the camera with concern in his eyes and authority in his tone] it really feels like it is 100ºF. So be careful out there, in that complicated world that has just been simplified into a hype-tastic extreme.

[/grumpy old man mode]