The Berkshire Eagle today explains how “the heat index” is computed. Saying it’s like wind-chill, the paper explains that it “combines air temperature and relative humidity to dermine how hot it actually feels to the body.”

…Except that wind chill calculates the cooling effect of wind, while the heat index does not. Presumably that’s because we’re interested in indices that make the weather out to be as unpleasant as possible: The wind chill lets us maximize how cold it feels while the heat index maximizes how hot it feels.

Boo hoo. Whatta bunch of babies we are! [Tags: weather self-pity]

Categories: misc dw