How Hot is it, Anyway?

 

Honestly—who can you trust—to provide accurate temperatures (of the air, not  of people)?

          I use Bing.com for my home page, and I have the weather icon come on automatically.  When I click on it, I can see the current temperature and the forecast.  But the service Bing uses seems to be wildly out of sync with other weather reports.  On Labor Day afternoon, the site stated that it was 114 F outside.  Wow!  I posted that on Facebook.  I stepped out the building door, and indeed, it definitely felt hot out there. 

          But the next day I checked several websites to ascertain Monday’s temps. It is harder than you might expect to find a report on a past day’s temperatures.  My query on Bing, and also on Google, elicited information about fairs and festivals in Sacramento (none of which are happening this year), along with websites giving yearly temperature averages and forecasts, but not the answer to my question. 

          The Weather Network advertises “past” weather, but only had the weather from fifteen hours prior, not the previous day.  Channel  13, the local affiliate of CBS, stated that the high Monday had been 105 F (at Executive Airport, which is just a couple of miles from me).  Time and Date gave Monday’s high as 106 F.  The Tuesday edition of the Sacramento Bee newspaper stated that the high for Monday  was 104 F at 3 p.m.  C!

          Finally, I found a great website called Localconditions.com.  It shows temperatures for every fifteen minutes for the prior day.  According to these listings, the high Monday the 7th was just under 106 F.  Well, that’s unpleasant, but it’s a lot different than 114, not a record-breaker, and no cause for bragging.   So I ask, what’s up with Bing’s weather source?  I wonder, but I really don’t have the energy to figure out who to ask.  If you know, however, please tell me.