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Feels Like Apparent Temperature
Our perception of reality may be more influential than reality itself. But it shouldn’t.
Often referred to as “feels like”, apparent temperature describes how hot or cold humans perceive the weather, as opposed to the actual temperature. Depending on our location’s climate, most of the time, the difference between temperature and our perception of it tends to be minimal but significant: one or two degrees celsius. However, if the humidity levels are high or the wind blows severely, our perception of temperature can easily account for five degrees or more. Many will have experienced life above freezing that felt much sharper than a dry and windless day at 0 degrees Celsius. Unsurprisingly, these days, more and more of us automatically check the feels like value because it gives a better indication of what we will have to dress up for.
Even so, I will often curse my app for telling me it feels like minus two when every neuron tells me my hands are about to fall off as if deep frozen, the last functional parts of my mind wondering why this town wasn’t built below the ground at least partially. My brain loves to exaggerate, and chances are that is the case for everybody else’s to some extent. The weather example is helpful to account for other aspects of our reality that our perception often blurs, sometimes…