I’ve always heard this in the weather forecast and it’s never made sense to me
If it’s 30 degrees and it “feels like” 50 degrees then what temperature does 50 degrees feel like?
Is it just exaggeration? How does it work?
I’ve always heard this in the weather forecast and it’s never made sense to me
If it’s 30 degrees and it “feels like” 50 degrees then what temperature does 50 degrees feel like?
Is it just exaggeration? How does it work?
Comments
I think they factor in humidity, (so 80° degrees with 0% humidity can feel like 80° degrees, while 80°degrees with 70% humidity can feel more like 90° or 95° f) along with other factors like wind speed, etc.
Think of the difference between a dry sauna and a wet one. Or go to NYC late in August to see how miserable it can be even though it’s only in the mid-80s.
The feel like temperature is what the weather feel like to your body.
When it’s hot out, it’s temperature + humidity that determined the feels like temperature. Aka Heat index. Higher humidity results in less evaporative cooling when you sweat so you feel hotter.
When it’s cold out, temperature + wind determines feels like temperature. Aka windchill. Wind removed heat from your body. The more wind, the colder you feel.
for 50C to feel like 50C, humidity would have to be near 0%.
There is a heat index formula you can look up or you can just search the internet for a chart.
Usually this phrase will be used in forecasts when there’s a degree (or lack thereof) of factors such as wind, precipitation, cloudiness that affect the feeling of the weather outside. A very windy, cloudy day in the 60s can easily feel like 40s or 50s under the right circumstances. That’s all it really is.
Ww don’t measure temperature directly. We feel it by how it affects our body temperature. Humidity makes it feel hotter because sweat can’t evaporate, which is your main cooling method. Wind makes it feel colder because the air best you your body heated up is being replaced with air you haven’t heated & sweat evaporates faster.
I dunno but temperature is off for me ..32 degrees F is cold to most but it’s tee shirt weather to me .. I’m biased to weather conditions
Human bodies aren’t air temperature sensing machines. We’re biological entities that produce heat that gets removed by the environment.
Air temp, pressure, and relative humidity all affect how quickly heat gets removed from our bodies via skin. The faster heat gets removed, the cooler it feels to us
It’s to do with environmental factors that affect how your body dissipates waste heat.
50 degrees on a thermometer is the same no matter how fast the wind is blowing, what the humidity is, or any other thing.
But if you stand on top of a mountain at 50 degrees on a rainy day with a 20 knot wind, that’s going to feel quite a bit different to you than standing in a sunny field with still air that’s at 50 degrees.
Likewise, standing in the shade in an area that’s 100 degrees with low humidity feels much more comfortable than standing in the sun at 70 degrees with high humidity.
The “feels like” temperature is an attempt to amalgamate many objective factors of the current weather conditions into a prediction of what the subjective experience of those conditions might be.
The actual temperature is how fast the molecules are moving or spinning.
The temperature it feels like is how fast heat gets conducted into or away from your body.
A rock and a piece of metal left in the sun side by side will be the same temp but the metal will burn and the rock will just be warm. The metal dumps its thermal energy into your body alot faster.
In terms of weather:
wind plays a role, you lose heat faster when its windy, so it feels colder.
If its super humid out, your sweat doesnt evaporate and you lose heat a lot slower, so it can feel warmer.