Quote:
Originally Posted by le calmar
I am sometimes bothered by the overuse of humidex and wind chill factor. Sometimes I hear that it is currently "-38C" or "44C" without any indication that they are referring to wind chill factor or humidex.
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Same. People doing this with wind chill bugs me more than with humidex, though. The reason is that wind chill is calculated based on wind readings at the airport stations, which thanks to being in wide open areas are almost always way windier than most of the places people actually spend time in. At least humidity is consistent across the city.
People in Eastern Ontario have a huge misperception of how cold their climate actually is in the winter. When you tell people from Ottawa that the average January high is -6C, they stare at you in disbelief and think that's way too high and say "no, it's gotta be like -15C right"?
This is because of the wind chill problem, and also because many people only check the temperature in the morning so are unaware of the afternoon high. So on a given Tuesday that is -6C in the afternoon, it will be, say, -14C in the morning with a -21C windchill, and people will think "oh, Tuesday was -21C".
Also the "minus thirty myth", as I call it. People think -30C is a typical winter temperature. It's actually extremely rare; in most Ottawa winters, you go through the whole winter without hitting -30C once. Last I checked, it's actually been something like 8 years since that temperature was ever recorded at YOW.