Temps are Higher than Weather Service Says: Article

[yoda]

Actual S. Fla. temperatures much higher than weather service says

By Joe Kollin
Staff Writer
Posted July 19 2004

You get out of your car, walk to Publix and the sweat pours off your brow.

It is hotter, you tell yourself, than the 89 degrees the U.S. Weather Service says it is. It feels more like 100 out there in the parking lot.

You are right. A mini-investigation by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Sunday (we bought a thermometer and measured the temp at various locations in Broward County) showed that it is hotter than the Weather Service reports.

And that's dealing with the actual temperature, not the "feels like" temps that throw humidity and other factors into the mix.

A spokesman for the U.S. Weather Service in Miami acknowledged the difference. He said official temperatures are lower than the real thing for many.

For example, our $10.97 battery-powered thermometer said that the temp was 105.8 degrees at 3:34 p.m., in the parking lot of the Publix Supermarket on University Drive between Johnson Street and Pines Boulevard in Pembroke Pines. That was with the sun barely peeking through the rain-filled sky.

At almost that same time, 3:53 p.m. at North Perry Airport, less than two miles away, the U.S. Weather Bureau reported 93 degrees. That's a 12.8-degree difference.

Angie Mobley, a resident of the area for 29 years, walked out of the Publix and couldn't believe the thermometer. She guessed 92.

"It was the breeze, I guess," she said, trying to account for the difference.

Neither Mobley nor fellow shopper Melinda Wilson, a resident for 32 years, expects to see the real temperature reported by the weather bureau.

"I just never heard them say its over 100, they always say its 90 or the mid-90's," said Wilson.

Two other locations also showed a divergence from the official temperature.

At 2:11 p.m. it was 100.8 degrees in the bright sun at Home Depot on Sunrise Boulevard and Northeast Fourth Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. At 2:47 p.m. it was 96.9 under a cloud-covered sky in the parking lot outside the Ruby Tuesday entrance of Broward Mall in Plantation. Both were well above the closest official reading of 84, taken at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport at 3:53 p.m.

Much of the difference comes from the weather bureau using "scientific requirements" in determining the heat and not, as some say, because it fears that higher temps would hurt the tourism industry, a spokesman said.

Meteorologist Jim Lushine of the Miami office said the bureau is required for scientific reasons to maintain uniformity so temperatures throughout the nation are reported consistently.

To do that, the bureau takes readings mostly at airports, even though no one lives there.

The official weather bureau takes temps under carefully controlled circumstances, not those faced by everyday people. It puts thermometers inside covered huts mounted in grassy areas with fans blowing to create a 5 mph breeze.

Lushine didn't dispute the results of the newspaper's temperature readings.

"There is a real difference," he said. "If you're standing in the sun, without shade, and with no breeze it's going to be hotter, but we have to have a standard way of doing it."

And if you think it's hotter now in South Florida than it used to be, Lushine agrees. For one thing, he said, all the pavement and development cause heat to remain at the surface instead of letting it radiate back into the air like it did back in the 1950s and 1960s.

Add another two or three degrees caused by global warming in the past 30 years and "you have it hotter by a total of four or five degrees than a few years ago in the metro areas," he said.

This year has even been hotter.

"We're averaging two to three degrees above normal and normal is now higher than normal used to be," he said. "In the '70s it rarely got to 90 degrees. This summer, every day has been in the 90s."

[Josephine96]

and you wonder why I like Weatherbug better than the NWS lol.. The Weatherbug temps. always seem to be a few degrees higher than the NWS

[wxfixer]

This is indeed good news!