In the winter, they call it the wind chill factor; In the summer, they call it the heat index. My phone weather app calls it the "feels like" temperature. I don't buy it; I used to, but now I think it's a crock. Everybody knows that humidity & wind effect the percieved temperature, but everybody lives in a certain place with certain weather. If you are like me, living in a pretty humid climate, and the temperature is 91 degrees, it feels hot. It feels like about 91 degrees to me, because I live in a humid climate. I don't need my weather reported to me as though it "feels like" 97 degrees. It doesn't; not to me anyways. If someone was visiting me from Phoenix, AZ (dry climate) they might think it feels like 97, but the majority of people watching the houston weather report live in houston, and it doesn't feel like 97 to them. If I went to Phoenix and it was 91 there, it would probably feel like about 83 degrees to me, but I'm betting that the phoenix weather forcast doesn't report that it "feels like" 83 degrees. So, it's all just to make things more dramatic, and if I want to see drama, I'll record "real housewives of new jersy" so I can watch it with my wife.

 

I am not sure what is your point. Could you tell it in just few words?

Chill factor / heat index, they do not make sense for you?

Interested on this subject.

 

Its all in your mind,ask all the sunburn people that enjoyed the beach.
They were felling fun in the sun.Stalking game in freezing weather,warm
as toast.All in your mind. Just being at the South Pole would all mind
comsuming,safety second. Can't get over the picture of a trash dump
at South Pole.

 

I am not sure what is your point. Could you tell it in just few words?

Chill factor / heat index, they do not make sense for you?

Interested on this subject.

Ok, another way to state my point would be to ask this rhetorical question: When the weather man reports that it "feels like" a certain temperature; Who does it feel like that to? An outsider who is not accustomed to the weather in that region? If so, why are we reporting that? It's all relative to who you are and where you are from when it comes to how you individually percieve the weather. Someone from geenland would probably perceive the 91 degrees in houston to be at least 150.

 

I think it's supposed to be a general idea of what the absolute temperature would feel like to a local if it was dry, but you raise a good point.
It's probably just to give the weathermen something to say.

 

Its all in your mind,ask all the sunburn people that enjoyed the beach..

I would say it's all in the weather man's mind.

...Just being at the South Pole would all mind
comsuming,safety second. Can't get over the picture of a trash dump
at South Pole.

Imagine if the south pole suddenly melted. It would be a big island littered with prehistoric animal carcasses and styrafoam cups. Nothing to do with heat index, but an interesting thought...

 

When I met the chill factor concept in the beginning of my career as a seaman I was puzzled the same as you seem to be now, but I managed somehow to explain what you say, for myself, in this way:

Provided that the calculated values (chill factor, heat index) are valid and out of discussion (I cannot judge on that), everybody is "perceiving" (feeling) the same temperature.

The difference actually lies in how do you feel vis-a-vis that equally-perceived temperature and it is there where your origin or what you are used to, comes into play.

Putting this in other words: we all (from different climates around the world), do "feel" the same temperature, but, what for some is a cause of discomfort for others is just a pleasing condition.

 

I wouldn't. People die from those differences. My Dad used to talk about working in short sleeves in Alaska when it was really cold, if the wind had been blowing they would have froze to death. This is wind chill, and it affects how fast a person cools down.

On the converse side, sweat is a coolant. If you can't evaporate sweat, your body heat builds, and can do so until you die of heat stroke. This isn't mythical, it is real. I lived in Arizona next to Phoenix, where the humidity was usually pretty low. As long as you could stay in the shade you could definitely feel the difference. Add a breeze to that and 105°F wasn't that bad.

In other words, there is much more to comfort than temperature. One of the reasons air conditioning works so well is it removes humidity from the air, and has to dump several 10's of gallons per day in a home into the sewers.

 

When I met the chill factor concept in the beginning of my career as a seaman I was puzzled the same as you seem to be now, but I managed somehow to explain what you say, for myself, in this way:

Provided that the calculated values (chill factor, heat index) are valid and out of discussion (I cannot judge on that), everybody is "perceiving" (feeling) the same temperature.

The difference actually lies in how do you feel vis-a-vis that equally-perceived temperature and it is there where your origin or what you are used to, comes into play.

Putting this in other words: we all (from different climates around the world), do "feel" the same temperature, but, what for some is a cause of discomfort for others is just a pleasing condition.

I high school I used to have a summer job working as a "lumper" (-one who moves people's furniture and possessions from one house to another). I worked with a guy from france who sweated profusely. I'm talking at least a couple of gallons in a day (not really related, but interesting detail). He told me that back when he was a kid in france they had a particularly hot summer where the temps went into the upper 90's/lower 100's (the same weather that we worked outside in, day in/day out). The country went into a state of emergency and people were piling into air conditioned stadiums. The elderly were dropping like flies.

I also knew a kid from alaska while I was stationed in connecticut. He would sit outside in short sleeves in weather that would undoubtedly kill me in short of an hour.

I would say that it has more to do with than comfort.

It is scientific and real, but it is also completely relative to an individual person. That's the problem I have with the wind chill/heat index reported by the weather man. You can't tell a group of locals that it "feels like" a certain temperature because to them, it doesn't. Maybe my view of it is a little narrow because I live somewhere where it's always humid. If I lived somewhere where it's dry & windy one month, humid & calm the next, then back to dry & windy, then I would feel a little bit different about it; but I'm not sure that place exists.

 

You do realize these values weren't just picked out of the air? In the case of wind chill it is how fast something (not a human) cools with and without a breeze, and how fast the wind is blowing. It is repeatable, and calculable, and is a physical property.

Sweating is a bit dicier, but just a real.

When I was taking martial arts I noticed a lot of my injuries healed faster, and it too more to damage me. Same thing with working around hot plates, I didn't burn quite as easily and healed faster. The human body adapts to different conditions.

You may not believe in it, but our military sure does. They have to, like I said, people die from variations in these extremes.

 

You do realize these values weren't just picked out of the air? In the case of wind chill it is how fast something (not a human) cools with and without a breeze, and how fast the wind is blowing. It is repeatable, and calculable, and is a physical property.

Yes, I realize that there is some math involved and that any weather man would spout out the same number given the same information. I just don't think that the number they spout out has any real meaning to their audience.

but then maybe they do.

...just give me a few hours, I think I'm starting to come back around. I'm a little slow.

 

Here is one crazy calculation to get heat index:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/epz/wxcalc/heatIndex.pdf

 

Here is one crazy calculation to get heat index:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/epz/wxcalc/heatIndex.pdf

Oh my gosh, come on. How could it possibly be that complicated? It looks like they just came up with an equation that spits out a number slightly higher than T, and looks so convoluted that nobody will ever understand it or try to understand it.

 

If I lived somewhere where it's dry & windy one month, humid & calm the next, then back to dry & windy, then I would feel a little bit different about it; but I'm not sure that place exists.

Yes it does.
It's called northern Indiana.
Us locals call it the bipolar weather state.

 

Another thing to point out, now that I think I got this, is that the indexes are the same everywhere, so a "feels like" 70 to you may not feel the same to someone from arizona, a feels like 70 in both places will feel like 70 to you. and likewise, a feels like 90 will feel the same in both places, even though the humidity and temperature are different.

 

As long as all the factors are considered, it should be the same. I'm willing to bet Arizona and Indiana are pretty different though weather wise. The first thing I noticed when I moved to Arizona is the static electricity, it was everywhere, because the air is so dry. It is like no where else in the USA.

 

Google "Wet bulb thermometer"

 

You know it's dry when you walk into your workspace and you can smell the moisture from the humidifiers.

Even here in the Dallas area, I can smell the moisture in the air before the first raindrop.

 

I too noticed the static when I went to new mexico.
In indiana we have SUPER dry winters, and sometimes droughts in the summer, and then we have some of the most humid days possible, like 100 and 90% humidity, so were pretty good at "feeling" humidity. I tend to rely more on the sky and the feel of the weather than on the weather station.

We went to new mexico and 90 felt like 70, it was awesome.
But I think there are some differences, because I know what a "feels like 80" feels like, and in new mexico, when they say "feels like 80", it feels like 70, so theres something to both sides of this.

Of course, it was 103, so it still felt hot. But I'll take 103 in a dry climate over 85 in indiana any day.

 

We might be able to quantify it by thinking about the ambient temperature as how fast heat is transferred from our body to the environment.

Not only temperature differential plays its role, but wind and humidity factor in too. That said, fast winds can "decrease" the ambient temperature by fastening sweat evaporation.