It’s more of an average than a “normal” temperature as far as I know. It’s definitly not 3 significant digits, I know that much-after all, my body temperature when healthy is more around 98.0 than 98.6.
handy,
I think you misunderstood (or maybe I have misunderstood). I don’t think Quisling was suggesting that your own body would be the cause of the 20 degree flux in skin temperature. Of course… that would be impossible if your core body temperature were 98.6. Your skin temperature will never be higher than your core body temperature without any outside influence (such as has been mentioned above). I think Quisling was just throwing out a little factoid to show that your skin temperature could definitely be different than your body temperature.
Things are random only insofar as we don’t understand them.