5 and 15 don't feel the same to me
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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It starts to make sense when we account for our body's reactions.
The human body must work much harder at some of these temperatures, than at others.
Closing a 3 degree gap between ambient and ideal temperature has a very different physical cost than trying to adjust to a 30 degree gap.
And at some certain point, the body's natural defenses start to run out of options (closing pores, adjusting heart rate, adjusting breathing, increasing or reducing sweat or activity level). Once the body applies every available defense technique, then each extra degree (now with no further defense to apply) may become dramatically more harmful.
This is also why wind chill matters. The actual amount of heat being lost by a body is much more relevant to safety than simply measuring the ambient temperature.
if its 45C thats hot.
Parts of the US can reach 100 during the summer
That sounded weird so I had to look this up. The hottest recorded temperature America is 134.4°F (56.7°C), which was measured in Death Valley, California, on July 10, 1913.
I think you could be mixing up °C and °F.
It is a joke about Celsius vs Fahrenheit
Just don't try visiting a place that is 100 Kelvin
Sorry, that went way over my head. 🤦♂️
-9.4°C, -15°C, and 1.7°C and 7.2°C, for those not using imperial units. Or rounded to the nearest fifth, -10°C, -15°C, 0°C, 5°C.
Thank you friend. Something something multiply/divide by 1.8 add/subtract 32. Haven't thought about that equation in years.
I just use this site (a bit of a slurry name, but it does its job)
Every license test I've had to take for my career (stationary engineering) I've had to do the conversions on paper so it just brought back evil memories of that time lol.
That's because human perception exists on a logarithmic scale! It's called the Weber-Fechner law, and it was one of the first studied psychological phenomena, before psychology as a field was even defined.
Interestingly, our sense of the "bigness" of numbers is also logarithmic. This is why there have to be explicit explanations of the massive difference between a million and a billion - our brains instinctively and erroneously think "eh, it's like double."
~edit I can't type~
"What's the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars? About a billion dollars."
It's .1% of a billion, that is a rounding error
My favourite way to comprehend it is by time:
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years
Or 1 million minutes ago was March 22, 2024.
1 billion minutes ago was the height of the Roman empire.
1 trillion minutes ago is a little bit before (about 100,000 years) the earliest homo erectus fossils we found
That's amazing, thanks!
I highly disagree. 5 and touching a metal doorhandle ungloved is painful. 15 degrees is relatively safe if your not doing something stupid but 5 you have to be bundled up well. My bet is it feels the same to you because you bundle up well when going out into 5. Also the wind chill gets much worse the lower you go. I think also there is a big effect as you approach freezing. I tend to hate 35 degree weather vs 25 because of rain vs snow. 35 degree rain is some of the worst weather to me because you can't simply bundle up for it.
As a Swede I can attest to that the biggest difference is when approaching 0°C or around 0°. It’s due to the air humidity. There’s still a bit humidity in the air around 0° but when that’s gone you don’t feel too big of a difference after that.
From what I remember from physics course, transitioning between solid/liquid/gas states requires extra energy to be absorbed or released that isn't contributing to change in temperature. So change from -1°C ice to +1°C water is actually taking more energy than from 10°C to 12°C, despite being the same difference in temperature.
Also, we perceive temperature not in terms of these absolute values anyway, but rather how quickly it transfers heat to or from our body. That's why humidity affects it, as moist air absorbs heat faster than dry (air being a pretty good heat insulator in general).
Once it’s below -5 it’s just cold. The range 10° above that has the possibility of being a damp cold and that sucks the life out of you
Yeah exactly
Yeah, -15 to -5°C is nice. But the range of -5 to +5°C... that isn't fun..
I can always tell when it's about 0 because I can feel a frosty tingle when I breathe in through my nose.
Hard to describe, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
In normal grades, 10 degrees in the autumn means winter is almost upon us, but 10 degrees at spring is t-shirt weather. And 20 degrees through the night means it's impossible to sleep because you're drowning in sweat. Probably very Norwegian issues, though.
Man I wish it eas 20°C at night where I am
I never wish for that, but seeing a positive number wouldn't hurt these days.
I don't know what 15 degrees Fahrenheit feels like. Or 5. Or 35. Or 45.
Trust I'm right then friend.
Never trust an American.
💋
15 f is pretty chilly. 35 f is cold if it was warm yesterday, but warm if it was cold yesterday, 45 is the same. 5 f is really cold if it's humid or windy, but tolerable otherwise.
-15f is where your teeth start to hurt if you open your mouth outside.
If we convert to civilized units, -15f is -26c. Ah, so not that cold at all lol
That's because you're using the silly farenheit scale, which was designed for brine. You should use celcius, which is designed for humans.
Celsius was designed for water. A human scale would be like 100 = maximum temperature human is expected to be alive and 0 = minimum temperature human is expected to be alive (and 50 normal human temperature, so the scale isn't even linear).
Humans are mostly water though.
And your scale makes even less sense because you are ignoring time and air moisture (for the maximum temperature). You would probably die very quickly in a 120°C hot sauna if it had 100% moisture.
Same with the cold: I'd not survive much longer than a minute in -50°C without clothes but with adequate protection several hours seems possible.
minimum and maximum body temperature (we are measuring humans, not the environment). I thought mentioning 50 as "normal human temperature" it was clear I was talking about body temperature
But the lowest body temp ever survived was 56.7F. making a scale out of that would be difficult because the distance from normal body temp to death is a lot closer on the upper range.
Fahrenheit is more of a scale of how the temperature feels to a human.
But the lowest body temp ever survived was 56.7F.
Fahrenheit is more about how the temperature feels to humans. 0 is really fucking cold, and 100 is really fucking hot.
Ah, that makes a bit more sense.
Maximum body temperature should be pretty obvious - at least with one or two degrees (Celsius) of wiggle room.
Though, with minimum body temperature, do you mean minimum while conscious or minimum survivable? Because there have been cases where people were successfully resuscitated after being submerged in freezing water for a very long time:
An 8-year-old boy fell through pond ice and was submerged for ≥147 minutes. Nadir peripheral body temperature was 7 °C (45 °F). After rewarming with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, prolonged hospitalization, and neurorehabilitation, the child recovered.
At 6-month follow-up, he was giving short commands, standing without support, riding a tricycle, eating soft foods, and relearning simple tasks.
Humans in different areas are used to and can survive different temperatures. There's this buddhist guy who goes out in the snow naked and meditates to produce body heat.
But all humans are made of water, and can relate its chemical processes to their comfort and survival.
I should have specified minimum and maximum body temperature. Doesn't matter where you are from, if your body temperature is like 15ºC or 45ºC you will hardly survive, and majority will die way before that.
So 0H is like 35C and 100H is 40C? That kinda sucks.
But after experiencing 15 or 5 for a few weeks 35 feels almost like spring. A few weeks ago I was half frozen at 35 with 2 jackets on, yesterday it was in the mid-30s and I took off my one jacket and was just in short sleeves because I was starting to get sweaty.
Your body adjusts to temperature changes.
When you experience the first cold day, your body panics and acts like you're going to freeze to death. After a few days pass and you don't freeze to death, your body realizes it overreacted and adjusts accordingly.
It's just a Nervous Nellie.
Yup. All winter, we have been whinging about single and teen digits and wanting summer to come around. Then we get blasted with 44C. We weren't careful what we wished for... But on the positive side, the rest of the summer will be a breeze. 😎
Absolutely true.
As a Mainer anything under like 5° C feels the same to me. The only difference is how much your snot freezes.
According to radio weather reports in Canada -5° usually "feels like" about -20 according to the elaborate calculations of the wind chill experts, so that checks out.
Yeah wind chill is a whole separate can of shitty worms.
I feel it the other way 'round. I'll wear the same jacket beyween 35 to 45°F, and add some layers for 15°F. But for 5°F, I'll switch to the parka.