The heat is on

One of the oddest things about Auckland (and probably other parts of New Zealand) is temperature. Not what it is, what they say it is.

When I moved to New Zealand, I had a hard time working out what the temperatures were. I grew up in the last non-metric country on earth, so I didn’t know Celsius from celery. But what made it especially hard to learn was the way temperatures were reported.

For some totally incomprehensible reason, the official Auckland temperature is taken in a nice, cool shady space that receives lovely summer breezes. In winter, this same place is sheltered from all that nasty cold weather. Apparently, the weather is far too inconveniently variable to place the official thermometer in a place where it might record a real temperature that real people really living in Auckland might really experience. You get the idea.

Auckland isn’t alone in this madness. When I lived in Chicago, the official temperature was taken at O’Hare International Airport, despite the fact that most city residents lived nowhere near the airport. Masses of them lived along or near Lake Michigan, which made it necessary for weather presenters to say “cooler near the lake” or “warmer near the lake”, as the case may be, so city residents would get some sense of what the temperature would really be.

What made me think of this today was that it was bloody hot. The weather presenters all said the high in Auckland would be a relatively reasonable 23 degrees (Celsius, of course—roughly 73 American degrees). However, as a commentator on this blog said today (on a completely different subject), the temperature there was 29—that’s 84 in American temperature and a lot hotter, especially when you factor in humidity (as we said in Chicago, “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”).

Don’t get me wrong: As uncomfortable as these days are, I’ll take these temperatures over Chicago weather any day. I do wish, though, that the official temperature more closely matched what people actually experience. A word to my overseas friends and family: If you see a New Zealand temperature reported on CNN or a website or whatever, add a few degrees. If you do, chances are you’ll know what we’re really experiencing.