‘Bred Crumbs

Daniel Engber, whoever you are, I love you.

Engber has written a piece for Slate echoing a crusade I’ve been pointlessly conducting for years: to get rid of the "wind-chill factor." Coming from me, this has been just one in a deluge of regular rantings that accomplish nothing but to amuse friends. (In an "oh what an odd, odd person he is" way.)

Now, a journalist hears my cry, and adds facts. I don’t expect Engber’s article to achieve my long-nursed goal of wind-chill abolition, but at least I know someone else out there is as irritated by this as I am.

Let’s bring tropical or meteorologically unaware readers up to speed. (As if there are still readers in this ne’er-updated region.) The wind-chill factor is a second, false temperature that forecasters spew in winter to tell you not how cold it is, but how cold it "feels," on account of the wind. It also apparently attempts to measure how stupid Americans have become, because once upon a time, people understood that if the wind blows when it’s cold, it seems colder. They didn’t need a number to define that. And, it turns out, the numbers have always been wrong most of our lives anyway.

While he doesn’t spend much time attacking wind-chill’s odious cousin at the other end of the scale, the "heat index," Engber points out that even the recently corrected wind-chill temperatures don’t account for the effects of sunlight on the weatheree. Or that wind speed changes constantly. Or that your body also has a role in what the temperature "feels like."

And the last thing we need is another way for the weather reports to be wrong. As proof, I give you yesterday: a beautifully clear Bay Area day that on Saturday the forecast had pegged for a 100-percent chance of rain. So weatherbeings, enough with the "feelings." You’ve got enough work to do just getting the facts right.