When the temperatures drop and become very cold, or conversely when it is very
hot out, you hear it everywhere. People saying "OMG,
tomorrow it feels like -40 out!" on Facebook, Twitter, and people you talk
to, your friends and around the office. There's a subset of people like
myself who are annoyed with the 'feels like' temperatures the media likes to
spew out. My problem is it's a perfect tool for the general population to
sensationalize the temperature. I's say a good majority of society likes
to complain about the weather, it's too cold, too hot, too rainy, too humid,
they hate the snow etc. Please just deal with it and shut the fuck up -
the weather in Canada is always variable, there's nothing you can do about it
and just learn to deal with it. Whining about it only annoys others
and doesn't accomplish anything, and the 'feels like' temperatures only feeds
these whiners with more material to whine about the weather. I personally
love the weather in all it's forms, it makes life interesting to me.
Sure, sometimes I would prefer to to have to shovel the driveway, scrape the
windows and white knuckle drive my way through a snowstorm somewhere, but still
it makes life interesting. It changes the landscape into a type of beauty
that changes with the seasons.
Don't get me wrong, the wind and humidity do affect how it feels like outside, but they are separate variables, and you can't manipulate the temperature with a formula to come up with some kind of equivalent. Environment Canada attempted to combine these things that feel different and with a formula wrongly, oh so wrongly attempted to spit out a 'feels like' value, and even have the balls to call it an equivalent temperature. You see, thermal conduction depends on different things. The heat transfer through materials and from radiation (infrared) and through convection (transfer to a fluid) are all different, so you can't just make an equivalent number of of some formula. Sadly, i don't think the wind chill and humidex will go away, since people like to sensationalize and this is toll for them to do so. To me it's -22 and windy outside... not 'feels like -40'.
Related Links
Don't get me wrong, the wind and humidity do affect how it feels like outside, but they are separate variables, and you can't manipulate the temperature with a formula to come up with some kind of equivalent. Environment Canada attempted to combine these things that feel different and with a formula wrongly, oh so wrongly attempted to spit out a 'feels like' value, and even have the balls to call it an equivalent temperature. You see, thermal conduction depends on different things. The heat transfer through materials and from radiation (infrared) and through convection (transfer to a fluid) are all different, so you can't just make an equivalent number of of some formula. Sadly, i don't think the wind chill and humidex will go away, since people like to sensationalize and this is toll for them to do so. To me it's -22 and windy outside... not 'feels like -40'.
Related Links
The Globe and Mail - Love
it or hate it, ‘wind chill’ here to stay
http://contrarian.ca/tag/wind-chill/
http://contrarian.ca/tag/wind-chill/
The "Wind Chill" bullshit started in the 70s when I was starting my career as an air traffic controller.........It started with an unknown TV weatherman conversation with an unknown meteorologist, they drew up a scale to imagine the effect of wind on cold temperatures. Unlike the Celsius or Fahrenheit scales, the values are totally arbitrary, they don't mean anything.............0 degrees C is the temp at which water freezes and 100 C the temp at which it boils. In the U.S it's called "real feel". Water still freezes and boils at the same temperatures regardless of the wind so the only usefulness of this is to make newscasts sexier and pump up the ratings!
ReplyDelete"Feels like" temperature is symptomatic of a general trend in our North American society to value feelings more and facts less. Intellicast has a "Temp." column and a "Feels Like column right next to it. The font sizes are the same.
ReplyDeleteIt's really easy to be looking for the real air temperature (Temp.) and instead read the feels-like-to-an-undressed-average-human temperature.
Whether or not that is a good thing or the right thing can rapidly turn into a philosophical argument. I think we all know who live fact-based lives and who live feeling-based lives. Our social world is always evolving - and there is a clear direction it is headed at this moment.
Thank you for your incisive and informed comment. More 21st century media horseshit put to rest. Amen.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me 'feels like' is used by weather people so they can lie about temperature without any guilt.
ReplyDeleteI have worked outside for most of my life. I know what 90 degrees feels like. Heat index tells me I don't know what 90 degrees feels like. If I did not want to work I would tell others it feels 106 degrees outside. Stop the nonsense! The couch potato that came up with feels like temperatures must have a higher college degree so he must be right! WRONG WRONG WRONG Stop the feels like crap!
ReplyDeleteI let my weather station know that I do not want anymore "feels like" temperatures included in their news casts. Everyone should do this and maybe it will stop some of the stupidity. Harmful stupidity needs to be stopped dead in its tracks or it will be incorporated and used against you by the democratic political party.
ReplyDelete