Microclimates
I often take a walk around the neighborhood near my house, and out of habit it ends up being the same route much of the time. Occasionally I think about how I ought to go a different way for variety, but suddenly, on a recent walk, I noticed something new about this supposedly old, tired route.
There are particular places along the route that are distinctly warmer or cooler in a consistent way. It's not just that the breeze kicks up or the sun comes out from behind a cloud. Now that I've walked this route many times, I see that certain little patches really are "warm spots" and "cold spots." I have discovered the microclimates along this route.
They vary in size, but are generally about 1/2 to 1 block's length. It would be fun to bring a thermometer and actually see how great the temperature variation is, but empirically, the cold spots make me want to zip up my jacket and the warm spots make me want to take it off. And although my internal thermostat is set a little cold (I tend to feel cold when others are comfortable, and comfortable when others are hot), I am not unduly sensitive to small changes in the temperature. So I think these microclimates must have significant temperature deltas.
How interesting! Imagine if you buy a house in a "warm spot" or a "cold spot" -- you might have a very different impression of weather in your town compared to a neighbor just up the street.
There are particular places along the route that are distinctly warmer or cooler in a consistent way. It's not just that the breeze kicks up or the sun comes out from behind a cloud. Now that I've walked this route many times, I see that certain little patches really are "warm spots" and "cold spots." I have discovered the microclimates along this route.
They vary in size, but are generally about 1/2 to 1 block's length. It would be fun to bring a thermometer and actually see how great the temperature variation is, but empirically, the cold spots make me want to zip up my jacket and the warm spots make me want to take it off. And although my internal thermostat is set a little cold (I tend to feel cold when others are comfortable, and comfortable when others are hot), I am not unduly sensitive to small changes in the temperature. So I think these microclimates must have significant temperature deltas.
How interesting! Imagine if you buy a house in a "warm spot" or a "cold spot" -- you might have a very different impression of weather in your town compared to a neighbor just up the street.
1 Comments:
I swear my house sits across two different microclimates :-) Along the north length of the house, one bedroom is consistently 5 degrees cooler than the other. I haven't figured out quite why; they're both on the north side, they are both about equally shaded and so on. It's interesting :-)
By BEG, at 12:15 AM
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