Son Goku
No lover of dogma
- Joined
- 14 Jun 2004
- Messages
- 1,980
wwwdjrcs said:Supposed to be around 0 all weekend long with the windchill :s
You think your weather changes are bad, New England is MUCH much worse
Actually, my parents retired in Maine, where I lived from Nov 1988 till Aug 1997... The winters are cold yes, and the days in December quite short... I mean, like sunset around 4 pm... But the temps didn't tend to change as much as what some are seeing. Of course we also lived on the coast, which tends to moderate temps some, as water masses such as the ocean don't lose heat as fast as air, or warm up as fast. A given sea breeze will tend to hold temps up in winter, and down in summer.
But there's another matter affecting this also. Relative humidity. In some areas, such as where I now live, where Sazar now lives (if he's still in the desert southwest as I'm assuming), and some others, the relative humidity is much lower. With the sort of relative humidity we had back in Maine, and also in New Jersey when I lived there for that matter; the air simply can't lose as much heat without hitting the dew point, at which point it's super saturated with more water vapor then it can hold. If it started raining or snowing, one would get some precip, but the air wouldn't just cool down further.
Alternatively, a daily variation of 30 or 35 degrees in a given day isn't unheard of in the desert southwest from the temperature around 3 pm vs. the temp just before sunrise (coldest part of the day). What has made things unusual here, is that the temps have varied by such an extreme amount from day to day, rather then the normal amount (which this has exceeded), simply moving from day to night...
There's one other difference also, besides temps having just been cold there during winters, and of course the snow fall; it really is a different kind of cold. 30 degrees when the relative humidity is about 85-90% (which wasn't unheard of in Maine), simply does not feel the same as the dry cold, say 30 degrees when the relative humidity is only 20%... Cold and humid, just doesn't feel as cold...
Alternatively, without all the moisture in the air, it's a different kind of heat in the summer too. Last summer we had temps above 100, but even there, it wasn't the same as the hot and humid August days we had in New Jersey, where it could hit 97 or 98 degrees, but be 95% relative humidity. Hot and muggy (where one day growing up, our air conditioner failed, we stuck to our sheets going to bed) just doesn't feel the same, as almost oven like heat...
This winter, we saw even 10 degrees or so one day. Some parts of New Mexico had seen sub-zero temps then. Now try that with 20-35% relative humidity, rather then the extra moisture one finds on the coast line
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