Tell me now, how should I feel
Aug. 28th, 2018 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
One of the things my weather station has on its screen is a "feels like" temperature. (If I push a button twice, I can get it to show me the dew point in that space for a couple of seconds. I don't know why in the world the makers of weather stations would think that people who would want a weather station would want the screen to display "feels like" nonsense by default instead of dew point.) Since it's an American weather station, the "feels like" number is the American "heat index" number, not the Canadian "humidex" number. Right now, my weather station is reading a temperature of 26.9 degrees Celsius and a relative humidity of 82%, from which it calculates, using the American heat index formula, that it "feels like" 29.3 degrees Celsius. Using the Canadian humidex formula, I can calculate (or, rather, I can let this site use the formula to calculate) that it "feels like" 37 degrees Celsius. So, for instance, if you are in Windsor, Ontario, and the temperature and humidity are as they are currently at the back of my shed, your local radio station will tell you it "feels like" 37 Celsius, which would be 98.6 Fahrenheit; if you are north of the river, in Detroit, Michigan, your local radio station will tell you it "feels like" 85 Fahrenheit.
Heat index and humidex are each calculated with very complicated formulas that are very different from each other, but, crudely speaking, the bottom line is that the temperature and the heat index value are the same when the dew point is 14 degrees Celsius, while the temperature and the humidex value are the same when the dew point is 7 degrees Celsius. [ETA: the preceding sentence is re-written from the wildly unclear way I had originally written it.] So, crudely speaking, what "feels like" amounts to is what the temperature would feel like if the dew point were 14 or 7 degrees Celsius, respectively. This means that the heat index gives a much more sensible value for Ontarians, if not for Canadians generally (as well as most Americans), because in Ontario, the dew point is never, ever as low as seven degrees when the temperature is as high as the thirties. That is to say, if you live in Ontario, you have no possible idea what 37 degrees feels like at a dew point of seven degrees, because the dew point would be way, way higher than that if the temperature were that high. On the other hand, (a) you might have some idea what a temperature of 37 would feel like at a dew point of 14, because you probably have experienced a temperature in at least the low thirties with a dew point that low, and (b) funnily enough, if you live in the American southwest, as far as I can tell, you probably have a lot of experience with temperatures in the mid-thirties and dew points in the single digits, so the Canadian humidex number actually makes more sense for you.
[ETA: I was going to say that I could've sworn that the Environment Canada website used to say that it was incorrect to give humidex values in degrees Celsius (because humidex is a calculation and not a measurement), but that, last I went looking for it, I couldn't find that on the site anymore. But here's a thing on the Weather Network site that says that.]
In other news, I have achieved my first tangible (in some sense of tangible) success as a fake farmer: I had the first place eggplant and the second place hot peppers in the Coe Hill fair. Thank God man doth not live on bread alone. Speaking of which, I have been more or less faithfully keeping up with my bible readings, and am currently in Jeremiah, in which God is real mad again, about which I will go on and on someday, probably.
Currently at the back of my shed: up a titch to 27.4. 27.7 currently at the new Crowe Lake station, which is the high today so far there. Up to 124 mm of rain in my rain gauge so far this month; so much for the mini-drought of June to mid-August.
Heat index and humidex are each calculated with very complicated formulas that are very different from each other, but, crudely speaking, the bottom line is that the temperature and the heat index value are the same when the dew point is 14 degrees Celsius, while the temperature and the humidex value are the same when the dew point is 7 degrees Celsius. [ETA: the preceding sentence is re-written from the wildly unclear way I had originally written it.] So, crudely speaking, what "feels like" amounts to is what the temperature would feel like if the dew point were 14 or 7 degrees Celsius, respectively. This means that the heat index gives a much more sensible value for Ontarians, if not for Canadians generally (as well as most Americans), because in Ontario, the dew point is never, ever as low as seven degrees when the temperature is as high as the thirties. That is to say, if you live in Ontario, you have no possible idea what 37 degrees feels like at a dew point of seven degrees, because the dew point would be way, way higher than that if the temperature were that high. On the other hand, (a) you might have some idea what a temperature of 37 would feel like at a dew point of 14, because you probably have experienced a temperature in at least the low thirties with a dew point that low, and (b) funnily enough, if you live in the American southwest, as far as I can tell, you probably have a lot of experience with temperatures in the mid-thirties and dew points in the single digits, so the Canadian humidex number actually makes more sense for you.
[ETA: I was going to say that I could've sworn that the Environment Canada website used to say that it was incorrect to give humidex values in degrees Celsius (because humidex is a calculation and not a measurement), but that, last I went looking for it, I couldn't find that on the site anymore. But here's a thing on the Weather Network site that says that.]
In other news, I have achieved my first tangible (in some sense of tangible) success as a fake farmer: I had the first place eggplant and the second place hot peppers in the Coe Hill fair. Thank God man doth not live on bread alone. Speaking of which, I have been more or less faithfully keeping up with my bible readings, and am currently in Jeremiah, in which God is real mad again, about which I will go on and on someday, probably.
Currently at the back of my shed: up a titch to 27.4. 27.7 currently at the new Crowe Lake station, which is the high today so far there. Up to 124 mm of rain in my rain gauge so far this month; so much for the mini-drought of June to mid-August.
