So where I’m at it’s August and there’s a high of about 72F here daily. When I woke up today it was 64 in my house and I was comfortable with perhaps an overshirt. I took a shower later that morning and my bathroom was 67 and I felt comfortable, no shivers.
In winter, it seems like I’ll wake up to a 64F house and feel like it’s not exactly freezing but oppressively cold and I’ll run the heater. I’ll put a space heater in my master bath to warm it up to 70F or so before I shower or I will just shiver and freeze otherwise.
Why do the same temperatures feel so much colder to me in the winter? Obviously there’s a psychological component, but is there a physiological component too?
Also, generally speaking, houses in CA aren’t very well insulated, so a few degrees – particularly with dampness – can really create chilly homes.
My mother lives in Orange County. When she visits our Rocky Mtn home – 10 y/o, very tight, 2x6 framing, lots of insulation, double- and triple-pane windows, etc., etc., she never stops commenting on how much warmer it is than hers, even with lower actual indoor temps.
64F temperature where? People usually place thermostats at a height so that they can read them so the temperature at the floor in the winter is probably lower.
Acclimated to the temperature is definitely a factor. 40° or 50° F. seems downright rude in the fall, though comfortable by spring. I was stationed by .mil in Hawaii for a few years. When I landed back on the mainland in Seattle it was about 45° in January and it was horrible. Then I drove cross country on I-90 and froze my ass off the whole way. I do enjoy A/C though, too. If it is set at “Meat Locker”, that’s about right.
If you’ve ever spent a week of two cold weather or winter camping you’ll probably find “normal” household thermostat settings way too warm.
Agree with @Common_Tater that the predominant result is that e.g. 65F feels subjectively warmer in late winter than in late summer. The opposite of what the OP reports.
I’ll suggest that air movement has a LOT to do with our subjective sense of temp. 65F and airflow in the house is a “freezing draft”. 78F in the house and airflow in the house is a “cooling breeze.”
I don’t think I can say anything lese useful about the OP’s experience; it sure does not match mine.
Since this is FQ, the best I could find that wasn’t locked behind a sub/paywall was this:
The short version is that as endotherms, we’re constantly adjusting our physiological reactions to better maintain heat, governed by both surface themoreceptors and brainstem regulation. So no matter what the temperature is (with rare exceptions) your body is either trying to dump heat (including that generated by your default chemical reactions) or generate heat. In other words, it’s all about the degree of separation from your biological norm.
Outside of the realm of FQ though, I think part of it is the entirely mental aspect of expectation. If I go outside in the middle of the winter on a sunny day, the feeling of that 40F or so is a welcome change from the 20F that is more likely. Or if a storm blows through in mid summer and it drops from the mid 90s to 70, you might feel like “damn, I need a jacket!”
And if you live in an area/season long enough to acclimate, it’ll be more extreme. My friend in Austin TX with 29 consecutive days over 100F just mentioned going to the theater and had to bring a jacket! When he asked what they were keeping the place at, they mentioned that due to excess heat they had raised the theater’s internal temps to 79 and apologized. They didn’t get that he wasn’t complaining about it being hot, he just was seriously chilled!
We may be mixing “feels subjectively warmer / colder” with “feels subjectively better / worse”. I am severely cold-blooded. I like my indoors hot and my outdoors hotter.
In the evening I frequently walk into hotel rooms that have been set all day to max cool. With the result that they are miserably beer-cooler cold to me, despite the 68 or 70F indication that many people crave. I promptly reset them to heat to 78 where I can survive without chattering teeth.
Today I spent substantially all day outside in 80-85 degree heat. Glorious body-supportive ideal warmth. Aaaah, warm throughout at last!!!
As is typical I walked into a 70F hotel room and it felt … refreshing. Not frigid, just pleasantly refreshingly less hot. Didn;t even feel particularly “cool”. Of course I reset the thermostat to 78 as always since I knew that was a temporary effect.
So to me today, 70F was subjectively “better”. Despite also being subjectively “colder”. Normally that same temp is subjectively both “worse” and “colder”.
There is more to perception of temperature than the basic air temperature. Moving air is one problem, as it cools the skin.
Another is that perceived temperature inside may also depend upon the temperature and emissivity of the surrounding surfaces. Cold walls are going to make a room feel cooler than warm for the same air temperature. And the converse. Windows are an interesting problem. Ordinary glass has quite high emissivity, but can be treated to be very low. Low emissivity glass probably makes a room feel colder no matter what. Curtains make a difference for lots of reasons.
OP here: thanks for all the replies. I’ll add that I have no air conditioning - I live 5000 feet from the Pacific Ocean, but of course I run my heat in the winter – it gets in the 30’s or 40Fs here.
This makes the most sense to me - in the winter I’ll use heat, and the surrounding structure of my house is colder than the air, so as I move around, perhaps to take a shower, I’m feeling the cold coming off those surfaces/walls.
When we return home after two weeks in the Caribbean (78-82 F) the temperatures at home (20-30F) feel horribly cold. Normally I wear a hoodie all winter, but after the Caribbean I shiver constantly for a few days.
One aspect of how hot you feel is the amount of heat radiating off of the surfaces around you. This radiant heat you can think of as light (infrared light). In the summer, all the walls, furniture, objects in your house are “brighter” than in the winter. All this light energy is hitting your body, and your body has to deal with the added energy it’s absorbing. In the winter, the objects are cooler, and therefore “dimmer” than in the summer. They aren’t as bright and not as much infrared light energy is hitting your body. Your body has to produce it’s own heat since it’s not getting as much infrared heat from external objects. Air isn’t so great at absorbing infrared frequencies. They pretty much travel until they hit a solid object, like you. So even if the air temperature is the same in both seasons, you’ll feel colder in the winter since the objects around you aren’t transmitting as much infrared light energy into your body.