Winter's Chill

Copyright © 2020

by Ralph F. Couey

This essay is likely to cause a lot of heartburn among those of you suffering through your mainland winters,  Having grown up in the midwest, and suffering in the 18-degree cold at last year's AFC Championship game in Kansas City, rest assured I do feel your pain.

Winter has come to Hawai'i.  Atop the world's largest volcano, Mauna Loa and its nearby sister Mauna Kea, about twelve inches of snow have fallen.  This makes for some unforgettable views, as most snow-capped mountains do.  Here in Honolulu, nighttime temperatures are falling through the low 60's.  Local people are going around in long pants, coats and hoodies, and have even eschewed the traditional flip-flop for actual shoes.  Now, before you all go into your eye-rolling, groaning, castigation of us islanders, allow me to explain.

Living in the tropics is an entirely different experience.  Because we are 1,600 miles closer to the equator, the sun's rays are far more direct than in the higher latitudes.  This means even on a day when the temperatures creep into the 90's, it can feel 10 or 15 degrees warmer.  And on those days when the trade winds shift or die completely, it is downright sweatily oppressive.  Living in such conditions, over time (at least a year), the pores of your skin open much wider, responding to the need for the body to cool itself.  I know it gets hot, humid, and oppressive in many places on the mainland, but there, those conditions last only three months, in some places maybe four.  Here, those kind of days persist for 9 to 10 months.  If you spend enough time here, you will lose all your tolerance for even moderately cool temperatures. 

Growing up in the midwest, my comfort zone, my wheelhouse was about 68 to 78 degrees.  For me, that was very comfortable, as long as the humidity was low as well.  But even in mid-January, I remember playing outdoors in shorts and t-shirt when the temperatures "soared" to 55 degrees.  My poor mother consistently upbraided me for under-dressing during the winter.

So here, the wheelhouse for locals is around 85. But on those days when the northeast trade winds die out, even the locals admit that there's nothing to do but sit there and sweat.  So when those nocturnal temps drop into the 60's, it really does feel very cold.

Houses for the most part are made of wood, about 2 inches thick.  There is no insulation, no furnace, so the only resort to try to get warm is to use space heaters and hope that the amperage pull doesn't overload the 60-year-old electrical system.  In the summer, those walls are very efficient at holding heat.  The first summer we were here, it was not unusual at all to see the indoor thermometer topping 100 degrees. Very few homes have central AC, and most folks try to get by with window units.  

This week, an unusual weather pattern has shaped up bringing winds out of the due north.  Tomorrow, those winds will be peaking at 20-40 miles per hour, so not only does the air feel cold, it's coming in at high speed.  Now, this is nowhere near the point of having a wind chill, but it does make it uncomfortable.  This situation is aggravated by my short-sighted decision to leave all my sweat shirts, sweaters, and jackets in our storage unit in Colorado.

If you're coming here from Minnesota, Montana, or Massachusetts this time of year, you might well believe that you have died and gone to heaven.  60 degrees will feel positively balmy.  But if you come back in mid-August on a windless humid 95-degree day, you may find yourself becoming ill.

A person's response to heat or cold is entirely subjective, and driven by acclimatization to whatever season it is.  For any of us to travel to a wintry place and step off the plane into 10-degree temps, it's likely that we, too will find ourselves incapacitated. So it would behoove us to be a bit more charitable when talking to each other about the weather.

By the way, the record low temperature for Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea  is 12 degrees.  Fahrenheit.

That's cold in anybody's book