Your Thermometer Is Lying

It’s not that the thermometers aren’t accurate they’re just placed in locations where a legitimate reading is impossible.

Make no mistake, it was hot today in Connecticut. On-the-air I joked how most of Connecticut was hotter than Palm Springs and Las Vegas. That’s pretty strange for July.

Often I’ll get photos from people showing their thermometers and reading well beyond what I’ve shown on TV. The photo with this post comes from my car’s ‘carmometer.’

The thermometers are lying! It’s not that the thermometers aren’t accurate they’re just placed in locations where a legitimate reading is impossible.

There are rules to follow before a reading can be believed. Official temperatures are air temperatures and are taken away from buildings, out of the sunshine in a white, louvered shelter and over a grassy surface.

My car’s thermometer is over blazing black asphalt. Backyard thermometers often pick up direct sunlight or just some reflection. They’re usually near a house… often one with a heat spewing air conditioning compressor nearby.

Unless I stick with the real deal I’m compared apples and oranges. That’s a bad idea.

Accept no substitutes. I don’t

4 thoughts on “Your Thermometer Is Lying”

  1. I thought my thermometer was cued in to my satellite radio’s geo-positioning system, which maintains estimated weather data.

    Or should I throttle the guy who sold me my car.

  2. Considering that the thermometer sensor on most cars is located below the front bumper as close to the read surface as they can get it–the error is NOT surprising.

    Also keeping in mind that the readout is actually most important when the road surface temperature is close to freezing, and THEN it makes perfect sense…

    My old Volvo 850 has an extra warning light that comes on when the temp near the road surface falls below 30 degrees–just to re-inforce the possible danger…but typical of Volvo, they did not bother marking the light with any label that communicates what the warning means…the light comes on, but you don’t know why, unless you actually READ the manual.

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