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Posted on 07/21/2011 11:24:36 AM PDT by theruleshavechanged
Reporting the heat index is much more accurate then reporting the temperatures. But there is a problem. Anytime an AGW acolyte can find an angle to support AGW, they will use it. So they are now reporting heat indexes and comparing them to previous temperature indexes. They need to either put disclaimers on the heat index (this is not comparable to previous temperatures) or they need to report previous historical heat indexes for comparison.
It IS hard to breathe! It’s because of the humidity.
The humidity doesn’t change the temp - but it does magnify the affect on the body - most definitely.
Do you think Drudge should have reported DC as 116?
The understanding is in the political aspect. Folks hear that is was 123 degrees yesterday and they think the world is warming. It is not an accident that the higher heat index numbers get so much play in the media.
Pretty state. Like anything sweet, it attracts pests.
I have a lot of family in Monroe. I try to stay away from Seattle. Heehee
So you're telling me that when it's 12 degrees and windy, it doesn't feel like it's 12 degrees and windy?!
I have no idea what you're talking about. When it's 12 degrees and windy it feels EXACTLY like it's 12 degrees and windy. Where I come from, at least.
Tell me about it! several years back I left Farmington NM when it was 98 degrees with 12% humidity. I didn't even notice the heat.
Two days later I am in Clinton Arkansas. 98 degrees, 80% humidity.
I walked out of a store there and almost went down because of the heat! It felt like a hundred fists hit me all at once.
I don’t object to the idea that a temp/humidity index is appropriate. Obviously it is.
I object to saying if “feels like” a particular temperature without referencing the corresponding humidity for that temperature level. By the terms of the heat index itself such a comparison is completely meaningless.
90/90 (seldom reached despite the myths) is utterly different from 90/10 or 90/30 in its effect on humans. So what value does a flat reference to “feels like 90 degrees” have?
There is no congruency to the other temps you mentioned. However, that being said, and notwithstanding, an ambient 55.8o at 100% RH is thermodymanically equivalent to 130o F @ 10% RH. Every equidistant temp between those limits - overlayed with an exponential increasing curve of RH as temps decrease - are congruent from a physiological thermodynamics perspective.
The problem with heat index is that it essentially breaks down below 80o F; THI doesn't. It takes into account the heat-sink properties of the mixing ratio at any arbitrary temp; 40o F air at 100% RH feels colder than 25o at 100% RH. To remain feeling warm after heating 25o air at 100% to standard "shirt sleeve" temp, one has to jack up the RH from the resultant 17% RH; otherwise normal perspiration will make one feel cold. To instill the same warm feeling of "shirt-sleeved" 72o F, the temp will need to be jacked up significantly higher. Obviously that reduces the humidity even more, but eventually one runs into the thermally radiative insulative wall, where heat loss from physiological activity is tolerated in a congruent fashion. Notice my repeated use of the word "congruent".
As far as THI, its a personal preference. I know what I'm doing; I used to do this crap for a living back in Reagan's U.S.A.F. The currently in vogue heat index is fine. One just has to consider that 77o @ 50% RHI will get one's shirt just as sticky - albeit in a significantly shorter period of time - than 43% RH will at 100o. While you'll keep your powder dry at 111o at 16% RH, you'll feel just as miserable as either of the foreging temps (and risk of heat stroke will remain the same). The only difference will be level of exertion and how long such exertion is conducted.
Actually there's probably more issue with 100o at 43% RH than 77o @50% RH in that normal body temp is 98.6o F. Therefor, one's body is being radiated by heat photons from the warmer surrouunding air into one's body and so MORE perpiration needs to occur to maintain a cool, calm and copacetic intellect. Where the major difference is going to occur is in the velocity of breeze.
Rush was going after the media for reporting it WAS 116, ambient, not heat index. Didn’t hear Rush’s rant, but did hear the 116 in DC on the radio.
Temp map showed it hotter in Corpus Christi, on the coast, than in Laredo which I immediately called BS. Map did not say heat index, it said temps.
I’ll stick with my 105, you can have the 60s!
I think if the one is so all knowing and all powerful, he should just ban winter. Hey, he stopped the rise in the oceans!
That is not the same thing. My dentist does not tell me exactly what he thinks that I will feel as he knows that different people have different tolerances to pain. The weather dorks should stick to reporting the weather and not try to say that we will all feel like its a certain temperature.
California is having the nicest summer I have experienced in 25 years.
It was 95 yesterday, but with the low humidity it felt like 88.
It "felt like" I was next to an open furnace door.
So while I might get flamed for saying so, but just because Rush says something, doesn't make it so.
I think you are confusing the weather dude’s hype with the objective formula which converts temp / relative humidity into a temperature with no relative humidity. It’s just a number. What the talking heads do with it the same thing they do with everything.
We’re all gonna die!
But the cooling effect from evaporation is considerable. Do you live in the South? When the air is still and the humidity is very high here, your perspiration just sits there on your skin and you get hotter and hotter. When there is a breeze the evaporative effect is significant for cooling.
Perhaps you missed the point. In a nutshell, I don’t need some weather dork to tell me what I am going to feel.
I guess I’ve never seen FR complaints about wind chill, so I am a bit taken aback by the complaints about the use of the heat index. Different sides of the same coin.
I do not think we are really complaining about the use of a heat index. We are complaining about them trying to tell us what we will feel. Just give me the temperature and the humidity level and let me decide how I will feel. We don’t like to be told how to think and we do not like to be told how to feel.
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