skepticism

[winterbadger]

I know the British idea of heat and the USAian idea of heat vary considerably, and for many reasons. But several commentators giving the play by play on English Premier League matches last weekend were commenting on how the players were struggling with the intense heat. As best I could tell, temperatures in London and Manchester (where several of the games were being played) weren't getting above 20*C. This seems rather far-fetched to be described as 'hot weather'. Can anyone shed any light on this (no heat, please...)?

[crossposted]

Comments

[wolfette]

20 C is very warm, especially when playing football. Remember that it's normally a winter game.

17 C is a pleasant summer's day. 20 C is a hot summer's day. 22 C is a very hot summer's day.

It's about 10 C here this evening.

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

Sounds hot to me. We've been getting a lot of humidity, too.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the actual temperature was, but Sunday was a hot day. We spent it at the seaside, and had icecreams. Lots of people were sunbathing.

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

It's 30C here today, and I'm all "ah, so much nicer and cooler." Whereas I'm guessing the average Londoner would be having heatstroke.

Oddly, my friend from Norway who's visiting doesn't seem bothered by the heat.

[lostinarden.livejournal.com]

They're soft to heat, and soft to cold, because they don't properly get either. The sad thing is that I'm turning soft after 3 years of being here. :-(

[rethought.livejournal.com]

Oh, you'd better believe that 20 is hot here.

We just don't get that warm very often. While I could handle 43C while living in Chattanooga, I'm dying of heat when it gets to be 17 or 18 here.

[silme.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think 20-something C is very hot here, especially with the high humidity. I don't deal well with those temps anywhere that it's really humid, including DC, Philly (where I was born and raised), NYC. I can handle higher temps in Colorado, New Mexico, etc. because of the lack of humidity.

Remember that I also think that England is a warm country, though, because it so rarely goes below freezing. I'm always warm here.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Saturday was horribly hot here in Liverpool, mainly because it was very humid, strong sun and also cloud cover and not a breath of wind - the actual temp was only about 25 or so but it felt much much warmer, my usual short work really left me wrung out; I imagine a packed stadium in London in similar conditions would be unbearable. Also, most of the country has been half-drownded of late, I think part of the reason we Brits grumble about hot weather is that its so changeable, you don't get a chance to acclimatise when its 26 and sunny one day and 16 and pouring with rain the next.

[sioneva.livejournal.com]

You know, i was thinking on this this morning, walking in to work. It's nastily humid today and I was feeling really, really hot and also laughing at myself in comparison when I used to live in Austin and it was 90+ with 90% humidity. THAT was hot!

But the thing is, when you're used to a Mancunian climate, where frequently temperatures hover around 15-17, 20 really is a warm day, especially with direct sun and humidity added in. When you throw in the fact that the football players were running around madly for 90 minutes, it makes it even hotter.

On top of that, remember that very few places in the UK have air conditioning, although I know that more shops in London do than elsewhere in the country. When it's sticky outside and you can't escape anywhere that's got a/c (except maybe your car), and at night the only thing you've got to cool you down is a fan, what seems like moderate heat in the US feels a lot hotter!

And I say this as someone who's lived in sub-Saharan West Africa, southern California, and central Texas ;)

[sioneva.livejournal.com]

Just to add to the acclimatisation bit - in Africa when I was a kid, temperatures of 60F in the winter were *cold* and my mother used to put on a sweater and wear trousers under her skirt (women there did NOT wear trousers, so she had to hide them). Your body just adjusts to a certain mean temperature after a period of time and you read deviation from that as hot or cold irrelevant of what you might have thought of those same temperatures when used to a different climate.