Post by scannerman5555 on Jan 29, 2005 16:38:57 GMT -5
Meteorologists at odds over how cold it really is
BY BRYN NELSON
STAFF WRITER
January 29, 2005
Anyone foolish enough to head out without a hat in Friday's record low of 4 degrees in Islip was bound to be miserable.
But exactly how miserable?
It's likely a moot question for someone with raspberry-red ears and frozen tears. But the answer has pitted the National Weather Service's wind chill against the RealFeel, a more complicated upstart calculation provided by State College, Pa.- based AccuWeather.
Wind chill, which estimates the wind's cooling effect upon exposed skin, takes into account both temperature and wind speed. At 7 a.m., for example, when the temperature hit 6 degrees at Islip's MacArthur Airport, it might have really felt like minus 9 degrees on your poor ears, due to a wind speed of 9 mph. With a lower wind chill, less time is required for frigid cars or runny noses to cool to the actual air temperature.
"It just always seems worse if you have a wind chill of minus 5, versus the actual temperature being minus 5," said Adrienne Leptich, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Upton.
For a slightly different misery index, there's the RealFeel, whose 7 a.m. reading suggested a somewhat more balmy sensation of minus 6 degrees.
AccuWeather senior meteorologist Bernie Rayno argued that RealFeel more closely matches how you'd, well, really feel, since its patented formula accounts for not only temperature and wind speed, but also other factors such as cloud cover, time of day, and relative humidity.
In November 2001, the National Weather Service tweaked its wind chill index to reflect more up-to-date atmospheric science, though the formula is still based on wind speed and temperature. The result, Rayno believes, are RealFeel and wind chill readings that may not differ much at night, but more so during the day -- especially on a sunny afternoon like Friday, when they diverged at times by as much as 8 degrees.
"If it's cloudy and it's windy, does it feel colder than when it's sunny and windy?" he asked.
Very likely, but perhaps besides the point to the folks in Embarrass, Minn., where the temperature on Jan. 17 dropped to a nostril-hair-freezing 54 degrees.
Below zero.
Without any assists from the wind chill or RealFeel temperature, thank you very much.
Roland Fowler, the National Weather Service's official recorder for Embarrass, duly noted that the low occurred at 7:50 in the morning, "but there was no wind to speak of."
The town of International Falls, 110 miles to the north, had prided itself as the "Nation's Icebox," but Fowler said that title may be in jeopardy, with a Weather Channel-sponsored contest regularly proving it.
Long Island beat out both towns Friday, however, with a high of only 22 degrees.
Noting that it was already 23 degrees in Embarrass as of 12:40 p.m., Fowler's wife confirmed the unusual weather.
"We're having a heat wave," she said.
Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.
BY BRYN NELSON
STAFF WRITER
January 29, 2005
Anyone foolish enough to head out without a hat in Friday's record low of 4 degrees in Islip was bound to be miserable.
But exactly how miserable?
It's likely a moot question for someone with raspberry-red ears and frozen tears. But the answer has pitted the National Weather Service's wind chill against the RealFeel, a more complicated upstart calculation provided by State College, Pa.- based AccuWeather.
Wind chill, which estimates the wind's cooling effect upon exposed skin, takes into account both temperature and wind speed. At 7 a.m., for example, when the temperature hit 6 degrees at Islip's MacArthur Airport, it might have really felt like minus 9 degrees on your poor ears, due to a wind speed of 9 mph. With a lower wind chill, less time is required for frigid cars or runny noses to cool to the actual air temperature.
"It just always seems worse if you have a wind chill of minus 5, versus the actual temperature being minus 5," said Adrienne Leptich, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Upton.
For a slightly different misery index, there's the RealFeel, whose 7 a.m. reading suggested a somewhat more balmy sensation of minus 6 degrees.
AccuWeather senior meteorologist Bernie Rayno argued that RealFeel more closely matches how you'd, well, really feel, since its patented formula accounts for not only temperature and wind speed, but also other factors such as cloud cover, time of day, and relative humidity.
In November 2001, the National Weather Service tweaked its wind chill index to reflect more up-to-date atmospheric science, though the formula is still based on wind speed and temperature. The result, Rayno believes, are RealFeel and wind chill readings that may not differ much at night, but more so during the day -- especially on a sunny afternoon like Friday, when they diverged at times by as much as 8 degrees.
"If it's cloudy and it's windy, does it feel colder than when it's sunny and windy?" he asked.
Very likely, but perhaps besides the point to the folks in Embarrass, Minn., where the temperature on Jan. 17 dropped to a nostril-hair-freezing 54 degrees.
Below zero.
Without any assists from the wind chill or RealFeel temperature, thank you very much.
Roland Fowler, the National Weather Service's official recorder for Embarrass, duly noted that the low occurred at 7:50 in the morning, "but there was no wind to speak of."
The town of International Falls, 110 miles to the north, had prided itself as the "Nation's Icebox," but Fowler said that title may be in jeopardy, with a Weather Channel-sponsored contest regularly proving it.
Long Island beat out both towns Friday, however, with a high of only 22 degrees.
Noting that it was already 23 degrees in Embarrass as of 12:40 p.m., Fowler's wife confirmed the unusual weather.
"We're having a heat wave," she said.
Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.