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12°F with a 10 mph wind doesn't "feel" like -15 or whatever crazy number they've come up with. It feels like 12, just with a moderate wind.
I was surprised by how cold 25F felt the other morning with 20 mph wind gusts. I would have guessed it was around 10 if I hadn't checked the temperature.
Wind chill makes more sense to me than heat index. A humid 90 and a dry 100 are easily distinguishable when you first walk outside. The humidity just makes it harder for your body to cool off. Wind, on the other hand, really does make it seem like the temperature is lower than it is.
I was surprised by how cold 25F felt the other morning with 20 mph wind gusts. I would have guessed it was around 10 if I hadn't checked the temperature.
Wind chill makes more sense to me than heat index. A humid 90 and a dry 100 are easily distinguishable when you first walk outside. The humidity just makes it harder for your body to cool off. Wind, on the other hand, really does make it seem like the temperature is lower than it is.
I do agree with your point. A humid 90 and a dry 110 are completely different feelings, so the heat index is really comparing apples to oranges. But I guess one of my beefs about wind chill is that it isn't always nighttime, and we usually aren't walking in an open field right into the wind (especially not in shorts and a T-shirt), and it basically says that the 5*F (-15*C) temperature that I've grown up to know and accept as 5*F actually "feels" colder than that, except when the wind is dead calm. I don't know how one can say that it feels like -10 when it's the exact conditions that his/her brain has come to accept as "about 5*F".
Either way, as Shalop said, heat index and wind chill are no more than dumbed down, contrived formulas that attempt to express the effects of dew point and wind, respectively, on apparent temperature.
Last edited by Cheesehead92; 12-20-2016 at 02:51 PM..
Reason: reword
"DC isn't subtropical because its winter temps are 0.1C lower than X, and Y isn't continental because winter temps are 0.1C higher than Z. Place XX isn't subtropical, because it cannot support species of nonsensus idioticus. Koppen/Koeppen climate classifications are dumb, because IMO a subtropical, humid continental, oceanic and subpolar oceanic should have these and those temps."
Ok, maybe not dumb things people say, but this argument if a climate is this and that is at least tedious, and they go on and on and on and on. Year after year. I joined in 2012, and the subtropical debate hasn't proceeded AT ALL. An annoying perpetrual motion machine.
I started lurking around here in 2014, and I've seen many iterations of the "subtropical debate" too. I do think Koeppen's "C" category is a bit too broad - Boston and Sydney do not have similar climates, and it is silly to believe they do. To me, a subtropical climate is one with a mean temperature in the coldest month between 41-68*F (5-20*C), at least five months above 50 (10), and a mean temperature in the warmest month above 70 (21). A humid continental climate has a coldest month mean below 41 (5), with a distinction made between milder continental climates (Boston, NYC, Washington DC) and colder ones (Minneapolis, Winnipeg) at 25 (-4). There are still at least four months above 50 (10). An oceanic climate has a coldest month mean between 41-68 (5-20) and at least four months above 50 (10) but a range between the warmest and coldest months of less than 27 (15).
Climate classification is a highly subjective matter, though; that's why we have Koeppen, Trewartha, and about 172,000 other systems. There is no one be-all, end-all way of classifying climates, and contrary to the attitude displayed by a great many on this board over the years, just because you or your favorite climatologist rates a climate as subtropical/subarctic/whatever it may be doesn't mean it definitively is. Singapore definitely has a tropical climate, and Vostok is definitely a polar ice cap. But the vast range of climates in between can for the most part fall into several different classifications.
Last edited by Cheesehead92; 12-23-2016 at 06:30 AM..
Reason: reword
I've lived in 6 different states with incredibly different climates and in every single one of them I've heard the locals use the ole "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes" line. It makes me cringe for some reason.
"DC isn't subtropical because its winter temps are 0.1C lower than X, and Y isn't continental because winter temps are 0.1C higher than Z. Place XX isn't subtropical, because it cannot support species of nonsensus idioticus. Koppen/Koeppen climate classifications are dumb, because IMO a subtropical, humid continental, oceanic and subpolar oceanic should have these and those temps."
Ok, maybe not dumb things people say, but this argument if a climate is this and that is at least tedious, and they go on and on and on and on. Year after year. I joined in 2012, and the subtropical debate hasn't proceeded AT ALL. An annoying perpetrual motion machine.
Not to mention the all too typical "so and so isn't subtropical because it drops below 80 F every winter, retardus phallus derpus can't grow here".
I don't think Washington is subtropical really - but it's not something I feel the need to go on about.
Orlando and Brisbane are definitely warm subtropical climates though, bordering tropical.
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