With our chilly climate ending soon, Singaporeans can only bask in the memory that, for a couple of days, we had some pretty amazing non-sweaty weather.
Temperatures dipped as low as 21.2°C yesterday morning (the lowest recorded temperature since 2016), and folks have either been overjoyed or annoyed that it’s cold outside. Either way, the country has responded pretty enormously to the spate of cool weather — a fact that may have irked some people who think that our reactions may be overinflated and hyperbolized.
After all, 21°C is pretty par for the course for summer in other countries.
One Redditor, however, believes that the criticism of our overly “dramatic” reactions to chilly weather is unwarranted. In an enlightening post made on the /r/Singapore page, Reddit user visss9 clarifies that any “overreacting” is actually justified because we shouldn’t be judging the cold by mercury readings. Instead, use a wind chill index, which will properly calculate the “real feel” indication. In other words, the cold that we feel is actually a couple degrees cooler than the actual temperature.
The user then goes on to explain that our high relative humidity will actually make the air feel colder than dry air of the same temperature. That, plus the fact that our buildings aren’t exactly built to withstand chilly weather, and the Singaporean “standard lepak outfit” doesn’t include layering up.
In lieu of mere copy/pasting from the Reddit post, go ahead and read the entire intriguing thread.
