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To be precise, the official reading in my town 30 miles NW of Chicago was -29F.
What you originally said was that the sun doesn't shine unless it's -30. This is quite clearly nonsense, even if you were exaggerating. Chicago simply does not have an extreme climate.
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And if you don't consider heat index part of the equation, go spend the summer in Florida; cutting grass.
You'll change your mind in a hurry.
Obviously I'm not saying that humidity has no effect on how it feels.
What I'm saying is that the formula which we call "heat index" is nonsense, if we try to interpret it as an actual physical quantity.
It's better to just use the pair of values (temp, dew point). Most people cannot handle two separate numbers so the heat index is just a way to dumb down the effect of the humidity on apparent temps.
What you originally said was that the sun doesn't shine unless it's -30. This is quite clearly nonsense, even if you were exaggerating. Chicago simply does not have an extreme climate.
Obviously I'm not saying that humidity has no effect on how it feels.
What I'm saying is that the formula which we call "heat index" is nonsense, if we try to interpret it as an actual physical quantity.
It's better to just use the pair of values (temp, dew point). Most people cannot handle two separate numbers so the heat index is just a way to dumb down the effect of the humidity on apparent temps.
Well, yes; I did exaggerate a bit.
I ignore heat index, opting for dew point to determine physical outdoor activity viability; no matter the temp.
The old saying it isn't the heat so much as the humidity still seems valid.
What you originally said was that the sun doesn't shine unless it's -30. This is quite clearly nonsense, even if you were exaggerating. Chicago simply does not have an extreme climate.
A lot of people would disagree. Chicago does have extremes, but you don't see the extremes when looking at the averages.. There are places of course much more extreme, but for a metropolitan area with 10 million people we have extremes.
Btw, during last January's cold snap west suburban Aurora 27 miles from MDW dipped down to -33F and 5 days later the temperatures rose by 80 degrees
February 2017 we had 6 days with temps around 70 degrees which is 35 degrees above normal (for six straight days). That's pretty extreme
We've had 100F+ temps with 125 degree heat indecies before that killed almost 1000 people in 3 days. That's pretty extreme
There is a distinction to be made here chicagogeorge: having an extreme climate versus having sporadic bouts of extreme weather. I agree that Chicago can get the latter (as we observed this past winter), however these extreme bouts are too few and far between for Chicago’s overall climate to be called “extreme”.
There is a distinction to be made here chicagogeorge: having an extreme climate versus having sporadic bouts of extreme weather. I agree that Chicago can get the latter (as we observed this past winter), however these extreme bouts are too few and far between for Chicago’s overall climate to be called “extreme”.
To be fair, we should compare things from the exact same period I think.
On the first page, the table uses the most recent 1981-2010 period for Chicago, and an older one, 1971-2000, for Marseille...
I discarded (on my screenshot) the mean maximums line and the mean minimums line from the original Chicago's table, because this type of data doesn't appear on the Marseille's table...
And to be even fairer, I used the International Airport station's data for both cities...
Now, we could also possibly say things like that:
People who prefer frequent heavy snowfalls and frequent deep cold in winter would prefer Chicago;
People who prefer frequent muggy heat in summer would prefer Chicago;
People who prefer frequent Mistral wind and sunny days would prefer Marseille;
People who prefer subtropical Mediterranean evergreen vegetation would prefer Marseille;
etc.
All in all, Chicago seems better for people who like being challenged by the weather and the climate, ie not for the squeamish if I may say...
That said, Marseille is just barely, barely sunnier than Chicago! Meaning Chicago is doing well on that thing, too!
And that said, we can find places with even milder weather throughout an average year than Marseille, too, to be compared with Chicago!
It’s not even fairer, you used Marignane airport data which is a bit different than the city of Marseille, Marignane is located inland and has cooler winter but higher summer high and lower summer low. It’s the reason why I used the data of Longchamp weather station which is way more representative than Marignane for Marseille climate (unfortunately this weather station closed and therefore there is no 1981-2010 averages for it, but we can compared with the 1971-2000 averages of Midway). Also, I used the raw averages of Midway because French weather service doesn’t even correct raw averages like NOAA do.
Last edited by Hartfordd; 07-07-2019 at 05:47 AM..
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