Crazy, crazy weather(s).

Being a beach-loving dude from tropical Philippines, I'm always concerned about the weather and, more specifically, the temperatures here in Japan. I'd like to call myself a summer person, because I realized that while we in the Philippines consider the temperatures there from December to February as cool, they're still actually summer temperatures in other countries, Japan, included, and even warmer than the summers in even more countries and places.

Anyways, so I always check the weather and temperature forecasts practically on a daily basis. In fact, maybe almost on a bi-hourly basis. I always felt Accuweather has the most accurate temperatures (at least for current conditions), but now I installed my own adhoc thermometer just outside my window, and now I'm using three other weather apps: Meteorologist on my desktop, the default Weather app on my phone (Yahoo!-based weather actually), and this "Celsius" app, also on my phone.

I took screenshots of the temperatures at one time, and here they are.



Above, you can see that the two phone apps, Celsius and Weather, are reporting the same current temperatures. Below, their forecasts for the next few days differ more when we go farther along. I didn't do it, but if I compared their forecasts the next day, these numbers all change again. Note also that below, Celsius is saying "cloudy and showers" for the current conditions, while above, Weather just reports cloudy.

And then here are my desktop apps (Accuweather is actually a website). They're reporting 2 to 3 degrees higher current temperatures than my mobile apps. And these two even have a 1 degree difference. As to the "RealFeel" and "Feels Like" temperatures -- sure, they're mathematically different -- the difference is even larger at 4 degrees.

Check out their forecasts now for the next few days. Same conclusions here as for the two mobile apps.

What is the real weather!??? Unfortunately, I had not written down what was my measured temperature during this time, but I think it was either 8 or 9 degrees.

In the Philippines, Filipinos complain about our meteorological agency, PAGASA, not being accurate enough or that they tend to just report the same thing everyday: "Chance of scattered rain and thunderstorms." The reality is, that's the reality. Weather is difficult to predict. Not yet. And now, not to the hour. Obviously we can predict how many seasons each geographic location experiences, but that's it. We can't even say that "summer starts exactly on this exact date" with certainty. We can see that a typhoon is coming, but which path exactly it will take is another thing.

There were days here even, that I talked about previously, when it was in the middle of winter (around February), and the forecasted high was probably not more than 15 degrees. But on that day, it went up to 28 degrees.

Anyways, this is an issue for me because I don't like carrying an extra jacket or sweater that I'm not going to use, and on the other hand, I don't like being cold. The latter is probably more important to me than the latter so I wouldn't mind the small sacrifice of carrying an additional 1 to 2kg around. At the same time, and this is especially during winter nights, I'd have enough layers of clothes to keep me from freezing in under-5-degree weather, but when I take the bus, inside of which is heated to 20 degrees, and it's a full one, those comfortable layers of clothes for outside makes it really uncomfortable inside. I feel a little bit nauseous, in fact. And it's not always exactly easy enough to remove even just my outermost layer of clothing because the bus is usually full. And I have to put them on again when I get off the bus. But then, I just think I'll just have to put up with this discomfort for just 20 minutes. So, yeah. Difficulties for a tropical dude in a non-tropical country. I love our hot and humid summers. And I really miss the beach.

I also have this sort-of-guide for what I should be wearing for certain temperature ranges. This is probably just applicable to me, being a hot and humid summer guy. I've seen people in cooler places where they can wear shorts, a shirt, and a jacket in 10- to 20-degree weather.

• 30 degrees and up -- shorts and a very light shirt, or go dip in a pool, or stay in an air-conditioned place
• 25 - 35 degrees -- shorts and a shirt
• 20 - 30 degrees -- pants and a shirt
• 15 - 25 degrees -- pants and a light jacket on a shirt, or a not-for-summer long-sleeved shirt
• 10 - 20 degrees -- same as above plus light thermal underpants and a thermal top (sweater or undershirt)
• 5 - 15 degrees -- same as above but a little thicker underpants, plus one more layer (a jacket or another thermal top)
• 0 - 10 degrees -- same as above, plus one more layer (a jacket or another thermal top)
• under 0 degrees -- same as above, and better to probably stay in a heated place.

You can imagine, if the forecast is like 0 - 10 degrees and it goes up to 25 degrees, suddenly, I will have very uncomfortable bottoms and 3 unnecessary layers of tops.