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Hmm, I highly doubt that two consecutive 32/18C happen that often in London. I don't think it happens as often as you think.
Well I've just checked, and by that definition, London hasn't had a heatwave since 2006. 32C seems a fairly tough but to crack, let alone consecutive days.
I agree re the media though. They seem to really over play warm weather over here. I guess they do it as they know that the British public crave heat, so saying all the heatwave nonsense is a way of making the average person take a little more notice of the weather.
I've noticed they massively underplay cold weather though. The only time they really bother is when it snows.
Didn't 2013 break 32 for well over 2 consecutive days?
To be fair though, it doesn't happen every year. I believe an official heatwave prior to 2003 was in 1995? Which shows official heatwaves are quite rare in this country.
Down here Heart radio goes over the top when it's cold. One of the woman reporters was complaining how cold it was in September 2013, when max temps went below 20C, she said it's been a long time since that happened and it's time to get the thermals on, or something like that... They also stated it was deadly freezing this morning... But yea, coldwaves are less in the media than heatwaves! I for one think that a heatwave must be official and at level 3 before it is in the news! Same goes with coldwaves! Just my opinion though...
anything above 100F is a heatwave
anything below 60F requires a windbreaker or longsleeve
anything below 40F you pray for snow, so I can go snowboarding or skiing with the Wednesday Flu
Sounds about the same as here (Houston). There was a dusting of snow in Houston ten years ago--amazing!
Hmm, I highly doubt that two consecutive 32/18C happen that often in London. I don't think it happens as often as you think.
Well I've just checked, and by that definition, London hasn't had a heatwave since 2006. 32C seems a fairly tough but to crack, let alone consecutive days.
I agree re the media though. They seem to really over play warm weather over here. I guess they do it as they know that the British public crave heat, so saying all the heatwave nonsense is a way of making the average person take a little more notice of the weather.
I've noticed they massively underplay cold weather though. The only time they really bother is when it snows.
I thought it would have, but checking for Heathrow it actually doesn't.. this year July was more consistent high 20s and we had no real heat, but last year I would have thought would have been a good contender.. we had a 33.5C/17.2C day but then the day after that was 29.6C/20.7C so maybe not. In 2009 we had 4 days in a row between 30C-31C that I thought were higher than that at the time. It seems we struggle to get more than one 30C day in a row here
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
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Heat wave: Anything above 33º C highs or 19º C lows lasting three days or so.
Cold snap: Anything below 2º C highs or -12º C lows lasting three days or so.
not where im at, we get upper 40s lows and if you were to live here you would know that even though averages state upper 40s, half of winter days are above 50 and half is in the upper 40s, with little days below 45 F.
by 60s i mean low 60s, and i say 5 days consecutive since when 45 F or less occur they are usually 3 days or less. heatwaves on the other hand is the same i would say 1 week of 100 F+ temps is a heatwave (in my location, as coast would be 90s for a week, our warmest microclimates that see average 100 F only see heat warnings when its a humid heat or an extreme heat event).
You obviously don't understand basic math. With the averages in the upper 40s, it usually means more days under 50 F than over 50 F. If half of all winter days were above 50 F, then the median low would be 50. For the median to be higher than the mean, that would mean there would be a skewed standard deviation with more abnormally cold nights than abnormally warm nights. L.A.'s climate is very stable and is the opposite of this. We rarely get lows much colder than average due to the moderating influence of the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the median is actually probably lower than the mean rather than higher. No more than one third of nights in January stay above 50 F and often the ones that do are during pineapple express rain events where the highs stay the 60s and don't drop much because of the cloud cover. Clear nights in winter always drop below 50 inland unless we are having a strong winter heat wave.
SW Michigan
Heat wave: 90F for 3+ days
Cold Snap: -10F for any amount of days
I don't know that there is a definition for heat waves and cold snaps for Southern Wisconsin, but our climate is similar to SW Michigan's and these sound about right to me. So that's about 32 degrees Celsius on the high end and -23 C on the low end.
Our weather people tend to talk more in terms of windchill and heat index advisories. For those, there is a firm definition. We get a a windchill advisory when windchills are -20F, and a warning when they are -35F or lower. We get a heat advisory if the heat index is 95-99F for 4 straight days, or over 100F for one day.
For Vancouver:
Heat wave in summer is anything over 27C (81F)
Cold snap in winter is anything under -5C (23F)
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