WEATHER Feelings

"BUT, IT FEELS LIKE...." 
   The screen shot above was taken on the 24th of April when we returned from the south where we had ventured in search of warm breezes and some colour -- other than grey. If you are familiar with Fahrenheit you may recognize that the predicted temperature that day was below 50, although you should notice that it was going to feel even cooler, before things begin to feel much hotter. Apparently the weather in any season is now intolerable for many who feel it is too hot or cold. My complaint is not with the weather and it is a complaint with which you are familiar.
   Since I am not yet in blogging mode and far more important things should be undertaken, I will present here past pronouncements related to this subject. Out of fear of repeating myself, I went looking for them and you might as well benefit from my research since Mulcahy's Miscellany has no index. Besides, some of the posts contain better writing by other people. This list is not exhaustive and more weather-related items are found in, for example, the very popular feature "Beyond the Palewall." I need to remember this if I am low on subject matter and tempted to bring up the weather again.

"The Human Suffering Index" 
   The HSI sums things up pretty well as does the illustration by Edward Munch which you will recognize. Also included is, "The Dead of Winter" which helpfully includes a typically contrarian argument about the virtues of Fahrenheit over Celsius" for reporting the temperatures we feel. 

"The Wind Chill" is about it and also the "HUMIDEX," both of which are typically exaggerated as these quotations indicate:
"But why does every winter day have to be described as colder than it really is? Listen to the radio and count how often the announcer says: “ … but it’s going to feel like …” Increasingly I’m even hearing wind chill given more prominence than the actual temperature."
and:
"Here’s an example. On one day in a recent summer, I found Detroit and next-door Windsor with temperatures near 28 C. The Weather Network gave Detroit a “feels like” reading of 30.5. But in Windsor, Environment Canada had a humidex of 38."

"Weather Statement" includes an illustration which indicates that the "Summer" in Canada occupies only a tiny bit of our calendar and that soon we will be saying, "So Long Summer." 

The Bonus: The Answer to the Question, "What is a "Nice Day?"
"Have A Nice Day."

Post Script: Things Could Be Worse

All that is needed is another man and a horse.

 

  To make you feel better, I will suggest that you would feel worse if you were to wake up in Lahore, Pakistan, which is illustrated above and described below (from, the Washington Post, April 22, 2024, "As the Concrete World Comes Apart, I Hope For More Flowers in the Cracks," Mohsin, Hamid:)

"The first thing that strikes me about the world is that it is has become poisonous. We cannot breathe. From November until February, the blue sky is hidden behind a low ceiling of gray. This is not from clouds but from smoke. It is uncanny to take a flight in these months, to burst only seconds after takeoff into the blindingly bright light and see not a city but a gray blanket below. The cooler months used to be months of outdoor sports and running around with my cousins and shielding eyes with the blades of our hands from the sun. Now they are months when the land receives too little heat to push the smoke into the heavens, and so it settles all over the riverine plains, prevented from proceeding north by the mass of the Himalayas, choking us.
My children are not permitted to do outdoor sports in these months. Indoors, they sleep to the whirring sound of air purifiers, machines I had not imagined until recently. When we played in the winter as children, we would quench our thirst by working the shaft of the hand-pump in my grandparents’ house. Now, our children do not go out to play. The hand-pumps are all dry. We have depleted the aquifer. A machine bore is required to obtain water from hundreds of meters down, and that water too has been contaminated. Our world has become poisonous: The fireflies are gone, the children cough like smokers, the water is full of heavy metals. The economic miracle we have been promised has arrived, and it is a miracle of despoliation."

The Wind Chill

 

   The autumn equinox is upon us and we are losing about three minutes of daylight per day. There is less daylight and there will be lower temperatures. Soon, as we watch the 6 o'clock news in the dark, we will be warned about the "Wind Chill." It is much worse than the temperature, which is why we are being warned. Invitations to local outings will be accompanied by reminders to wear mittens and appropriate footwear. I suppose such warnings are issued not because we are stupid, but because the inviters want to be spared a law suit should we be bitten by the frost, or because we might have forgotten about the Wind Chill.

   Meteorologists have largely abandoned the thermometer and the temperature in favour of the expression "It's going to feel like....!!!" . As in other realms of our experience, I suppose,  feeling is more important than thinking.  The season of the Humidex has passed and there was rarely a pleasant summer day that was not described as "Horrific" because of it. Winter is bad enough, but it will be made much worse by the Wind Chill. I guess it could be even worse if there was also some kind of a "Light Index" and we warned that on the dreary day to come the weather person will say that "Tomorrow afternoon at 1, it is going to feel like midnight." 

   I may be a contrarian, but I am not alone on this issue. Back in March, the veteran science journalist, Tom Spears,  had this to say about both the "Wind Chill" and the "Humidex." The source: "The Weather: Opinion: Why Are We Inflating Our Weather Forecasts? The Scam That is the Wind Chill." Toronto Star, March 7, 2021.

On the Wind Chill:

"We have a problem with our weather.
It’s being reshaped by an inflationary force that is pushing out hard data — and replacing it with squishy approximations of “how cold it feels.”
This problem is a simple thing we hear about all the time: wind chill....But the wind chill still made the day feel colder than the actual temperature. At least, that’s the official story.

But why does every winter day have to be described as colder than it really is? Listen to the radio and count how often the announcer says: “ … but it’s going to feel like …” Increasingly I’m even hearing wind chill given more prominence than the actual temperature. I hear neighbours and people in shops talking about the terrible cold, -20 or -25 C, when the temperature is -15 C or so.

The effect of this is inflation. No matter what the temperature is, we keep telling ourselves it feels colder. And the deck is stacked to promote cold. First, the wind chill calculation doesn’t consider any warming influences, such as the sun that warms your face at this time of year. Touch a brick wall that faces the sun and you’ll feel this effect. Also, wind is generally measured high above the ground and with no trees or buildings nearby, often at airports. Down at ground level in my neighbourhood (or yours) the wind is less strong.

On the Humidex:

Now with spring coming, we turn to another way to make ourselves miserable and distort the weather all at once. We have the humidex. Again, it’s an approximation of how we feel, and yes, humidity makes heat worse, but this factor needs an overhaul.

Here’s an example. On one day in a recent summer, I found Detroit and next-door Windsor with temperatures near 28 C. The Weather Network gave Detroit a “feels like” reading of 30.5. But in Windsor, Environment Canada had a humidex of 38.

The humidex occasionally shows figures in the 50s in southern Canada, which is nearly equal to the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth. Toronto regularly gets humidex readings in the 40s, which is like summer in Arizona or south Texas, places where air sears the lungs and you can’t touch a steering wheel without running the air conditioning for several minutes beforehand.

Besides, what does it mean to say that we’re experiencing the equivalent of 35 degrees without humidity? When do we experience zero humidity in this country? It’s an illusory comparison, and continuing reinterpreting the temperature teaches us to misread the weather, with potentially dangerous results.

   Additional support is found in a fine work about old age, by an author who, like me agrees with the old concept about old age (see my OATS series where it is generally argued that 70 is not the new 50.) About the wind chill he notes on p.54: 

The wise old do not just instruct youth; they also buttonhole them to tell them tales of how much better it was back then or, if not better, then nobler and harder, when people were not spoiled by material success and indulgent parents. I really did walk through deep snow to school and there were no snow days off for excessive wind chill. That index was not kept. Once it was kept, people as far south as Nashville could claim to have endured zero degrees Fahrenheit when it was thirty-three on a mildly winter day. Wind chill is yet another instance of grade inflation penetrating into every nook and cranny of our lives.

From Losing It, by William Ian Miller. 

For more see: SO LONG SUMMER.

The Human Suffering Index

     We have yet to get through "our severest winter commonly called spring." Although the meteorologists here have stopped warning us about the Wind Chill Factor, they will soon be sounding the alarm about the Humidity Index. Those at the Weather Channel have only been able to get through these drab doldrums by, either suggesting that great storms are on the horizon, or by showing us terrible weather from elsewhere. My wife has suggested that we need a new index - the Human Suffering Index - which will better measure the extent of our meteorological misery. It offers the extra benefit of allowing those of us who have experienced these dull and damp days to identify as "Victims" or "Survivors" so we can be like everyone else.


 

CODE RED 

     I thought it was just the weather people on the Mother Channel (the CBC for my southern readers) who issued dire warnings about being wizened by the wind chill or scorched by the sun if the temperature was a degree-or-two below or above the number on the thermostat. Apparently, however, the practice of dramatizing the weather is widespread. We prefer our weather alerts to be alarming, just as we want our news to be breaking. Of course, the bosses at headquarters know this, even though most of them aren’t meteorologists. Recently, those in charge at the Sinclair Broadcast Group sent a memo to the stations they own suggesting that labelling most of the Weather Alerts as “Code Red", would surely be a good idea. Ratings metrics may have played more of a role than meteorology in the decision making.


     The weather guy at the Sinclair station in Springfield, Illinois is either a fan of Chicken Little, or a reader of Aesop’s Fables. Or perhaps he is just an honest weather guy who thinks that constantly crying wolf is not in the public interest. The good news is that he told his viewers the truth. The bad news is that he was fired.

Sources:
"A TV Meteorologist Objected to Management’s ‘Code Red’ Orders in on-air Apology. He Might Be Out of a Job", By Matthew Cappucci Washington Post, June 7, 2019.
"More Criticism for Sinclair Over 'Code Red' Weather Warnings, David Zurawik,
The Baltimore Sun, June 17, 2019.
"The Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group has been in the news the last two weeks for the controversial firing of a meteorologist at one of its stations who called out the company on-air over what he characterized as the hyped use of “code red” weather warnings.
But the use of “code red” as described by Crain seems an especially egregious way to use fear to try to drive ratings, and it goes to the heart of what journalism is and isn’t supposed to do."

Post Script:
    The clever quote about spring is from Cowper as loyal readers will know. See "The Dead of Winter."
   My wife insists she thought of the Human Suffering Index and apparently she did. A search found an International Human Suffering Index, but it is unrelated to the weather.

   Speaking of "indexes": A while back, I came up with the "Pajama Index" which indicates that seeing a lot of mid-30s citizens at mid-day in PJs sitting at a Tim Hortons is not a good thing, economically speaking. I searched to see if such an index existed and found one. I probably read the article so some other Irish person likely deserves the credit for creating the PJ Index: "The Irish Economy’s Rise Was Steep, and the Fall Was Fast," Landon Thomas, New York Times, Jan.3, 2009. “Social workers in Moyross refer to the “pajama index”: the more men and women one sees who do not take the time and care to dress for the day, the worse the economic situation tends to be.”
   The sinister Sinclair corporation owns a large number of U.S. broadcast stations. If you are conservative, you should be happy about that.

Canadian Content - The Humidex is a Canadian creation. Perhaps it is yet another thing we should apologize for, in that the humidity is one thing Canadians cannot tolerate and because it gave rise to the too oft-heard whine, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity."