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/
