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 Dead of Winter

   Once again I will bring up the subject of weather, something we all do when we are having a discussion and have little to say; an "ice breaker" of sorts. The title of the post is an appropriate one since it is very cold and the landscape is devoid of living things. I thought the "dead of winter" was the coldest part, but remembered that Canada's national meteorologist and one-man Farmer's Almanac defines it more optimistically as the date when there "is more winter behind than ahead of us." In this neck of Canada, the day is around Jan. 23rd, but we are still a long way from the "dog days of summer." One has to remember that there are several weeks to go before we enter "our severest winter commonly called spring."

Source: 
   The national weatherman is Dave Phillips and for more see: "Winter is Leaving, For Some of Us, Climatologist Says," The Canadian Press, Jan. 13, 2017.
   The really good definition for the Canadian spring is by Cowper and it is the real reason for this post since otherwise I would have forgotten it when the sleet is falling on MAY TWO FOUR. I didn't find the quote in something written by Cowper, but it is in a book written by Edwin Way Teale: Springtime in Britain. 

Post Script:
   As an old-timer I still think in Fahrenheit and find it preferable not simply because I am old.  If I was talking to my sisters in Florida today where it is about 70F I could brag that it is just about 70 degrees cooler here. In Celsius there would be only a 38 degree difference. If they happen to call me during those few days in July when it gets into the 70s, I can say so. There is no Celsius equivalent. If you say it is going to be in the 20s Celsius the temperature could be anywhere from 68 to 84. The Celsius teens are even worse. Although no one wants to agree with the Yanks these days, perhaps they were correct to keep the old method.
   I don't usually provide sources for the stuff found in the Post Script section, since the stuff usually consists of my thoughts for which there is usually little support. But, with just a little bit of searching I learned that my views may not be as unreasonable and antiquated as I thought. See: "Fahrenheit vs. Celsius: Did the U.S. Get it Right After All?" Daniel Faris, zmescience.com, Nov. 20, 2017
"Fahrenheit is also more precise. The ambient temperature on most of the inhabited world ranges from -20 degrees Fahrenheit to 110 degrees Fahrenheit — a 130-degree range. On the Celsius scale, that range is from -28.8 degrees to 43.3 degrees — a 72.1-degree range. This means that you can get a more exact measurement of the air temperature using Fahrenheit because it uses almost twice the scale."
  As far as other weights and measures go, I am not bothered, but my very long drives in golf still travel in yards and my weight is being gained in pounds. Don't forget, however, that many people were bothered and changes such as these can have unintended consequences.
"Remember the Metric Martyrs? The fishmonger and greengrocer in Camelford, the market trader in Hackney, the greengrocer in Sunderland, all convicted in the early 2000s for using imperial scales and labelling? It was one of the darkest times for the EU’s reputation in Britain. If we’re looking for specific reasons why so many people voted Leave, it’s worth contemplating the lingering ill-feeling left by those small acts of bureaucratic bullying, when the ‘little guy’ going about his daily business was squashed and criminalised by the rigid mechanics of Council Directive 80/181/EEC, stipulating the use of metric measurements, incorporated into English law in January 2000."
"The Original Metric Martyrs Are Still Waiting for a Royal Pardon: Their Story Became a Turning Point in Britain’s Relationship With the EU. It Isn’t Over Yet," Ysenda Maxtone Graham Spectator - July 9, 2016.