So HOW HOT is it?! Really?

Factual Questions
1

Southern California was scorching today. Really, really effing hot. How hot, you ask? Well, that’s my question.

Looking around online, I’ve seen all kinds of contradictory information. Let’s focus on Los Angeles–large enough city, there’s plenty of data.

According to Earthlink, Los Angeles was 97 today. According to KNBC, it was 93 today. And according to KNBC–just elsewhere on the site–LA is 103 at the moment. There’s an article at the site, also, saying the hottest area in the state was 106, with San Diego 103. ???

According to Earthlink, tomorrow’s high is 91. According to KNBC, it’s 81. And today’s high was 79. (My butt!)

According to WeatherBug, in my city, it was 109. Now it’s 100. According to Earthlink, my city was 105.

ARGH!

Who’d have thought “How’s the weather out there?” would be such a difficult question to answer?

In short: It’s freaking hot. But…is there any real way to know for sure how hot?

2

Well you could buy a thermometer. They only cost a few bucks.

But to answer the gist of your question, the problem here is that temperature varies place by place and hour by hour by a considerable margin. Any info on the web about temperature is for the temperature at a particular place at a particular time.

All of the various temperatures you have found were probably accurate somewhere, somewhen.

3

Buy a thermometer. Not one of those wierd springy things, or a cheap digital monstrosity. Get a graduated glass tube with mercury or alcohol inside.
Calibrate it.
Set up the thermometer outside, taking care to place it properly.
When you want to know how hot it is, go out and read your thermometer. It will tell you the temperature.
If you want a less complicated answer, the National weather service posts the current weather conditions for most locations in the US.

4

Damn, it was hot today! It was so hot, I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both melting! It was so hot I saw an opossum boiling a robin in a birdbath! It was so hot, I caught on fire! (Okay, I’m lying about that last one.)

It was pleasant at Marina del Rey today. A little warmer than I like for a maximum temperature, but not bad really. It cooled off as I paddled out to the end of the jetty. Then I came home.

I had the a/c on in the Jeep, so I was nice and cool. When I parked and got out, I was surprised at how hot it was. I thought that the engine had overheated! (I was walking forward along the front of the vehicle.) Then I passed the front of the car, and it was still hot! I realized that I was feeling the heat of the noonday sun.

Southern California is entirely too hot for my liking.

5

I agree - it had to be the hottest day of the summer today. I’m down by the beach in south OC and it was like an oven down here!

6

I had the a.c. set to 78 since around 11 am, and by 7pm, it still hadn’t made any headway against the heat. The temp. in the house has only dropped to 88 (it’s 10:15pm as I type this). I’m in a valley, so the heat just settles here.
It should cool down over the next few days, though.

BTW, did anybody hear thunder very early this morning, like 1am or so?

7

Maybe that measurement is in celsius. :smiley:

8

<< snickers at wussy SoCal Dopers >>

Heh. They think it’s hot… Now, the Midwest, that’s something else…

9

Hey now, DDG, I grew up in the Midwest so I do know of which I speak/complain/whine! :wink:

85 degrees in Indiana, with 80% humidity, was absolutely intolerable. 85 degrees here, with 30-40% humidity, is a touch uncomfortable, but quite bearable. Indiana at 90-95 degrees, with equally high humidity was about as hot as I remember it getting, and that was indeed pretty damn miserable.

But 109 degrees?? No amount of humidity makes that a pleasant, or tolerable, experience. It’s right up there with 90 degrees and 90% humidity. Yet, nothing in my years in the Midwest compares to it. Yesterday was awful, and truly akin to baking in an oven–particularly when walking over asphalt like, oh, a parking lot. And this is odd, but I know when it’s over 100 degrees out–there’s a certain Easy-Bake-Oven-intensity to the heat. Hid-e-ous. Yuck.

Meanwhile, okay, I knew I’d get the obvious “buy a thermometer” replies (I thought of the line in Good Morning Vietnam: “What’s the weather like?” "You got a window? open it!)…but c’mon wisecrackers, that’s not my question…how the hell do the statistics get that erratic? My thermometer may say 109, but then why do they say in the news that the hottest city in SoCal was El Cajon with 106?? And that my city reached “only” 103? Whose thermometer is off? And what can be done to calibrate it? How do they determine such things?

The question I’m asking is what variables are throwing all these numbers around. How do weathermen know L.A. had a high of 97–and then why does the exact same website say LAX was 103 right at that moment (which was early evening, when things are beginning to “cool”)? It just seems like there are a great many inconsistencies in gaging temperature.

The long of the short of it is “It’s really, REALLY effing HOT!” But just how hot and how do meterologists determine it, scientifically? (And an aside–what variables can throw off a thermometer? Obviously, putting it in direct sunlight on an asphalt parking lot would skew results…but what else?)

[sub]BTW, it’s 10:30am right now…and 97 degrees, according to WeatherBug. And our forecast high is 107. Feh![/sub]

10

Aw man, it died like this? C’mon, someone out there has to know how meterologists determine these things.

It reached 104 today, and is a “cool” 88 now. I stayed indoors.

11

Too freaking hot for me! And I was packing and toting heavy boxes!

What’s the best thermometer available to the public? Where do you get it? A scientific supply house? My dad was in the FAA, and they had a box for the thermometer. Actually, two thermometers – a wet and a dry – along with, IIRC, a barometer. (There was an alitimeter inside of Flight Service.) The point was to keep the thermometers in the shade so that they would measure air temperature instead of the sun’s direct rays. Hence the saying, “It’s a hundred and four in the shade! And there ain’t any shade!” :wink:

12

Ruffian your questions are being answered, but you are not listening. Check out the links in Squink’s post. There is a standard placement for a thermometer. Your thermometer is probably not placed so carefully.

A very wide variety of factors will affect the air temperature of the place where you have put your thermometer. The colour of nearby surfaces and what they are made of (affecting how hot they get in the sun and how much heat they radiate), insulation, air movement, whether you are in a valley or on a hill, whether you are on the north or south of hills or trees, on and on and on.

Even very small movements of the thermometer will have a significant effect. If I put the sensor under the eaves of my house but close to the wall it will show hotter due to heated air (from the sun on the lower part of the wall). Moving it out even an inch further from the wall is cooler. In my uninsulated shed can be hotter than the outside air, even though it’s shaded.

As to reported maximums and seeming anomalies in reported temperatures, you may well find that to be due to the cut off for that day, eg. the maximum for a given day may be the maximum for the 24 hours to 3pm (or whenever). So at 4pm there may be a higher temp, but it will show up in the next day’s figures.

Or there may be reporting lags. The Australian Bureau website for example shows updated maximums 2 hourly. So it lags and if it has gotter hotter since, it won’t be accurate.

And then you may be confusing maximums from different places. You say the LA max was 97 but LAX was showing 103. They are two different places.

I grew up in the western suburbs of Brisbane which was always 2-3 degrees hotter than the reported maximum for Brisbane, because the Bureau’s point for measuring “Brisbane” was further east, nearer the sea and its breezes. I had friends who lived a bit further west (still in Brisbane) in a deep west (i.e. afternoon sun facing) valley which got no breeze, which was 5-6 degrees warmer still (and weren’t they glad :)).

So the answer to your question (ie get a thermometer) is not just a joke. If you want to know how hot it is where you are it is the only way.

13

I checked the Squink’s link. That’s the box they had at FSS when my dad was in FAA.

I took a survival class at Edwards AFB several years ago. They said that if you crash in the desert to get either above or below ground level. Just half a meter above or below the ground the temperature is significantly cooler than at ground level. So placing the thermometer next to a reflective surface as Princhester said will give a higher reading.

FWIW the thermometer on my thermostat (a spring contraption of questionable accuracy) says it’s 80°F in my flat at the moment. Bloody hell. I saw the forcast high temperature for Vancouver, B.C. on CNN Headline News and they’re expecting 56°F. Oh, to be up north! If I’m too cold I can always throw on a jacket or a blanket. But if it’s too hot I’m S.O.L.

14

What **Princhester ** said.Every city has an "official"site for recording that cities temps.Unfortunately Accuweather,among others,definitely do not use that figure.

I’d suggest you call the weather bureau for LA and ask where the temps are measured.Some local news weathermen also give you temps for various parts of the metro area you’re in,which can vary as much as 5 or 6 degrees F-up or down in the southwest,due to large and small varying geographical influences,eg.elevations, seashore,valley floor,etc.and the relatively low humidities.