Lately I’ve been thinking about weather a lot. Mostly because every time I step outside I feel like my face is going to fall off. But that just might be my slight overreaction. But I don’t think so. It seems as though the weather here went from 100 to 0 real quick, and to my surprise and relief, I’m not the only person here who thinks so.
Store are already stocking their shelves with holiday gifts and displays.
I can still vividly remember profusely sweating as a dragged my way towards my new apartment in the 90 degree weather. Not even a two weeks later I was bundling up in warmer clothes. I do want to note here that I’m just generally horrible at dealing with temperature. For some reason my body is just never quite adjusted unless I’m lying in bed, under my warm covers – but that also might just be correlated to my teenage laziness.
Practically every store is getting into the upcoming holiday spirit.
I want to be clear that the weather here isn’t unbearable it’s just slightly surprising. I packed preparing for a cold winter, but I hadn’t expected it to be as chilly as it is. And at first I sincerely thought I was losing my marbles. Everyday it ranged in the 40s to 50s and yet I was dressed as though I was going skiing in the alps. I couldn’t stop feeling like I was overreacting but at the same time I was so cold.
You can find holiday cookies and cakes in almost every store!
And then I had a revelation that would absolutely blow my mind. This week has been particularly cold due to the impending winter months on the horizon. But a little voice in the back of my mind kept saying, “Mannheim is the second warmest city in all of Germany, why on Earth am I this cold??” So, I turned to my trusty friend Google.
Screenshot of weather and humidity levels from a couple of days ago from timeanddate.com.
And what do you know, my sleuthing paid off. Actually, it didn’t. I couldn’t find a single reason as to why Mannheim was so cold out of nowhere. I mean, come on, I’ve been in single digits before and not been as cold as I am now, I just couldn’t put my finger on it no matter how hard I tried. And then I realized a key component of temperature I hadn’t even looked at: humidity. And that’s the story of how I fell back in my chair at the sight of seeing 100% humidity in Mannheim the day I did my detective work. Here’s a fun fact about humidity during the winter: the higher it is, the colder it feels. At least I now know the real villain behind this mystery.