With the recent onset of autumnlike weather, clothes in your closet that have not seen the light of day for several months are suddenly making an appearance. Cooler weather means more and more people in flannel, sweaters and even jackets.
This is a perfect opportunity to think about the clothes we wear and how they change based on the outside temperature.
I thought it would be a fun exercise to define climate based on the clothing you wear to keep your body at a comfortable temperature. As the saying goes, weather is what you are wearing, and climate is what you have in your closet.
I conducted an analysis to determine, based on the climate of major cities across the country, what types of attire are expected and their frequency. Here are some of the key findings over the course of a year:
- It’s winter-coat weather most frequently in Anchorage and Minneapolis.
- It’s light-medium coat weather most frequently in Portland and Seattle.
- It’s fleece weather most frequently in Oakland and San Francisco.
- It’s short-sleeves weather most frequently in Honolulu and San Diego.
- It’s shorts weather most frequently in Miami, Honolulu and Phoenix.
The type of clothing associated with a certain weather pattern is, of course, highly subjective. No two people will ever completely agree on where you draw the line between jacket and no jacket, or shorts versus pants.
That said, few people will wear shorts when the temperature is 40 degrees. Similarly, someone wearing a winter jacket when the temperature is 90 degrees outside would probably generate a lot of concern or suspicion.
Below, I created a map displaying the distribution of expected clothing in different cities using pie charts. Each of the five clothing categories is shown as a different color representing the percent of daytime hours throughout the year. The sum total of the five categories always adds to 100 percent.
Pie charts with a lot of blue (light blue and dark blue) indicate that jackets are required a significant portion of time. We see this in the north-central and northeast Lower 48 and Alaska.
Pie charts dominated by red and orange indicate a large percentage of time where no cold-weather accessories are needed. We see this across the southern states and Hawaii. For each city, a small white dot indicates exactly where the city is located.
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Some of the patterns are expected, and some are surprising. Remember that these are year-long patterns and are not broken down by season.
Areas shaded in green (central Great Plains to western Ohio River Valley) on the map have categories that are nearly equal — signifying a wide variety of weather and clothing needs throughout the year. As such, some of the cities requiring the most varied attire include Omaha and Kansas City.
The cities with the most uniform conditions, requiring the least diverse wardrobes, include Honolulu, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Phoenix.
The bar chart below provides another way to look at the data:
Methodology
In this analysis, we use a “feels like” temperature for all the categories. A wind chill and heat index were calculated for all hourly temperatures between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. for 1,200 stations in the United States and Canada over a 10- to 20-year period. If the temperature is 60 degrees or under, the wind chill is used. If the temperature is over 60 degrees, the heat index is used.
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Here are the five types of clothing that every weather (temperature) condition must fall within based on the wind chill or heat index:
- Winter jacket: Less than 25 degrees.
- Light to medium coat: 25 to 44 degrees.
- Fleece: 45 to 64 degrees.
- Short sleeves: 65 to 79 degrees.
- Shorts: 80 degrees and above.
Not only might people argue about the criteria, but the category names will also surely bother some people. What about parka weather? Sweater weather?
Some people wear shorts when it is 55 degrees outside. Do they get a category?
Also, people in Florida will have a different opinion on the categories compared with someone in North Dakota. All those issues aside, we will never agree on the fine points, but these categories should be amenable to the largest group of readers.
Conclusion
If you are stuck inside and want to know what the temperature outside feels like, all you need to do is go to a window and see what other people are wearing. This provides almost as much information as the phone app that reports the latest meteorological conditions. As science communicators, we spend a lot of time thinking about new ways to confer complicated information to the largest number of people. Sometimes the best method is to find an everyday experience that everyone can relate to.
