The whole point of the thread is why people are reporting these outlandish temperatures when the official temperature is never that hot.
Yes. Except for those posts stating that it wasn’t true.
Does it really have to be this contentious? There are different kinds of temperatures. One is the temperature of wherever the thermometer happens to be, be it a walk in freezer, a hot city street, or a breezy yurt. This can vary greatly, as temperature is affected by exposure to direct sunlight, the heat absorption of ambient materials, etc.
The official temperature of record, used to calculate weather statistics, is measured in a controlled environment. This allows us to track and compare temperatures in a meaningful way. This represents the temperature of the air itself, isolated from other influences. This doesn’t mean it can’t be hotter than that, it just means that if it is hotter, it is because of factors other than the ambient temperature. A large blacktop in the sun, for example, is basically a passive solar heater, so yeah, you will be hotter standing on top of a giant heater.
I spent a couple years in an area where three months of the year had average highs of over 100, and where you could go weeks over 110. The highest temp on record is 126 (and we didn’t have air conditioning, anywhere.)
Yes, I could get my little cheapo thermometer up higher by laying it in the sun. And I’m sure when I was walking around in the full midday heat, I did experience temperatures above 126. At that temperature, the difference between the heat radiating off of different surfaces becomes dramatic, and I walk around town with my eyes closed just by feeling the difference radiating off of the walls and streets. Some of those surfaces were surely radiating more heat than the open air.
But the official temperature Still much lower. What I was experiencing was the temperature as well as all kinds of other heat sources.
What I was trying to say only better.
Sure. I will stick my head in the oven and report the extremely high temperatures I am experiencing in Georgia this time of the year.
Y’all hear? I experienced temperatures of over 200 degrees in Georgia!
Me
I remember in an introductory meteorology class a professor showing us a photo of a thermometer on a wall outside in the sun reading 80°F. He then showed us another photo with a wider perspective showing that it was a research station atop a mountain in Greenland. The actual air temperature was below freezing.
Yes that is exactly the same.
NASA measures LST land skin temperature. It is no less real than the “official” temperature. It feeling cooler in the shade is not an illusion.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/HottestSpot/page1.php
This thread is not contributing to my trust in the US military…
Moderator Note
Staggerlee, let’s keep political potshots out of GQ. No warning issued.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
“It’s hot. Damn hot! Real hot! Hottest things is my shorts. I could cook things in it. A little crotch pot cooking.” Well, can you tell me what it feels like. "Fool, it’s hot!
I can say will certainty that if you’re standing in the stairwell of a coal plant in the middle of July in North Carolina, that it’s hot as balls. ( I was told 140’ but didn’t verify it)
He’ll, even on top of the roof of those things it’s absurdly hot.
Man it’s hot. It’s like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot.
I used to work for my Dad’s roofing company in the summers, some days when the official temperature of the city was up over 100 degrees. Up on the rooftops, in direct sunlight and with the ambient heat from the rooftop surfaces, I was probably experiencing close to 120 or 130 degree temperatures sometimes.
Would it be inaccurate for me to report that those were the temperatures I was experiencing personally, up on the roofs? Absolutely not.
Would it be inaccurate for me to report that it reached 120-130 degrees that day in little old southern Oregon? Absolutely.
This isn’t a difficult concept to figure out. People can personally experience MUCH hotter temperatures than the ambient air temperature as measured meteorologically and NO ONE is claiming otherwise. It’s not an illusion or inaccurate or invalid for people to experience temperatures higher than a daily high as reported by the weather man. But neither does that mean that it “actually” got up to 120 or 130 on a given day when it really, really didn’t.
Where are they getting these temperature measurements from? I never saw a thermometer in Iraq report a temperature of more than 123 degrees. But of course, I didn’t stick one under my body armor either.
Me neither but our tour happened to miss the worst part of summer. But our last day in Kuwait the official temp was 127. Kuwait sucks.
You know a place really sucks when the 125+ degree heat is not even the worst thing about a place.
Me
This debate is so old…but let’s go through it again and see if we can all agree on some fundamentals.
First off, please look at the photos in the link provided below. The photos show the temperature taken with a NIST calibrated handheld laser temperature gun in Tikrit, Iraq.
These show pictures of the temperature: 1) in the shade 2) in the sun and 3) inside a vehicle. The associated temperatures are 120F, 139F and 159F, respectively.
Now this brings up the whole argument of what is the actual temperature. The simple answer is that the temperature is 120, 139 and 159. Why? Because that is what it IS at that location! If you put your hand on the sand that is what you will feel? Enough of the argument that “the true temperature is not that”… Hogwash! If you put your hand on the steering wheel and it burns you then that is the temperature! Who cares if the “official” recorded temperature inside a shed is lower? If you are walking on sand that is 139F do your boots magically cool off to the official temperature somehow? Of course not.
BTW, I would setup actual weather stations and the dry temp, wet bulb temp & temperature in the shade were, although nice to know, mostly unimportant after 10 am as that was when the situation turned into a BLACK flag almost anywhere.
Anyway, just a bit annoyed hearing people complain and say that the “official” temperature was much lower especially when they cite errors in the equipment used as justification. Practically, anything over 120 becomes all the same in the effects it has on those who are experiencing it.
http://s1368.photobucket.com/user/safety_officer/library/
Considering the entire fucking point of this thread is the official temperature, your post is completely pointless.
If a chef used a meat thermometer to measure the turkey’s internal temp before serving it to the troops on Thanksgiving in Iraq, it would measure around 165°F (it better!) That would beat all the temps posted here so far. Of course, if someone dropped the same thermometer into boiling water, it’d be quite a bit hotter. Hell, hold it a couple of inches over an open flame for pure air temperature!
This is the problem with the question in a nutshell, and why standardized measures are what count, and only what count.