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The Chicagoist Weather Experiment: Week Three

By Sarah Dahnke in News on Feb 12, 2007 2:45PM

2007_2_12_tammiesouza.jpgChicagoist isn’t a big fan of getting up earlier than we have to, so we tend to watch the weather at night. We don’t like to wake up with a surprise blizzard going on outside our window. And we’re one of those nerds who decides what we’re going to wear the night before. But we realize that we only represent a portion of the population with our beliefs, so for this week’s version of the weather experiment, we decided to use a morning forecaster.

Fox’s Tammie Souza is not only the first morning meteorologist but also the first woman to be a part of the Chicagoist weather experiment. While Chicagoist is wary of all things Fox, we tried to go into week three with an open mind, with the stipulation that if we heard anything about how global warming is a hoax, we’d throw our snow boots through the T.V. That’s just how we roll.

Find out if our television stayed intact after the jump.

Monday: Souza, like most meteorologists, was reporting Monday to have the coldest temperatures in 10 years. She said there would be a wind chill between –20 and –30 (as if you can really tell a difference) and a high of 2 degrees. But hey, it’s going to be sunny! After we bundled up as much as possible and began our morning walk, we only made it a couple of blocks before the moisture on our sunglasses, which occurred as a result of us breathing into our scarf, froze into little beads. We watched the high actually climb to 8, but the wind chill didn’t really budge. So, so cold.

Tuesday: Tammie predicted a high of 10 today and snow, with a winter weather advisory for the area. The snow that still remains on the ground today is a reminder that Tuesday was indeed a snowy day. Although, it felt slightly lower than 10 degrees for most of the day.

2007_2_12_snowprint.jpgWednesday: This day we were prepared for yet another morning of wind chills well below 0 in the morning with a deceivingly bright and sunny sky. Souza predicted a high of 12-15 degrees, which sounded really, really warm after the past couple of days. When we stopped in Currency Exchange in the morning, a man called it a “heat wave.” It was 15 degrees at noon, and by 3 p.m. it felt even warmer. Hell, it could have been a whopping 20.

Thursday: We were getting really tired of these wind chill advisories, which Tammie was once again warning us about this morning. She said the wind chill would be below 0 again, with an actual high of 13. It would be sunny and bright all day with winds of around 10-15 mph. Earlier in the day it didn’t feel deathly cold, but as the day wore on, we began to lose feeling in our feet and realized Souza was right about that whole wind chill thing.

Friday: Surprise! The forecast was for yet another below-zero wind chill day, with a high around 15 degrees. And that sun isn’t really helping things feel warmer. The high was closer to 12 today, which had virtually no effect on our outerwear choices.

Third week’s conclusion: Souza’s predicted highs were pretty right on all week, and the fact that she was obsessed with wind chill factors was definitely a good thing on a week where we saw –20 wind chills more than once. She is at an advantage when compared to an evening forecaster, though, because she reports her weather the day it will actually occur. However, we were surprised that Souza was so focused on temperatures and paid very little mention to other weather factors such as precipitation, cloud coverage or wind speeds.

We plan to track a few more Chicago meteorologists as part of this experiment in addition to a few other non-television weather sources. Who always leaves you out in the cold without a coat? Who or what would you like to see us use as a weather source in the weeks to come?

Souza photo (from her NBC days) via Desipio. "Footprint" photo via runjenrun01.