Why Your Car Always Says It’s Hotter Than The Weather Forecast

There are few things more irritating on a hot Oklahoma day than getting into your car and seeing a temperature on the dashboard that is several degrees higher than what the weatherman says.

The weather app says 110... Your car says 114...

Makes you think something is off, huh?

Technically, nobody is.

There is usually a huge difference between where your car is on any given day and where weather stations are located around the state.

It's always much hotter during the day when you're rolling on hot concrete.

Where Weather Stations Get Their Temperature

On the flip side, weather stations are carefully placed to avoid things that can skew those temperature readings. The sensor is mounted a little off the ground, over a "natural" surface like grass, under some shade, with plenty of room for air to move around it. Like in the middle of a field at your local airport.

Basically, it's trying to measure the atmosphere. Your car can't tell the difference.

Everything in Oklahoma is hot during the summer. The asphalt is hot. The concrete is hot. The buildings around it are hot. Everything is a giant collection of surfaces that absorb heat all afternoon. Even long after the sun has gone down, touch the brick on your home, it'll still be hot.

It's all the same with your car.

Leave a dark-colored vehicle sitting in the Oklahoma sun for a couple of hours, and you've essentially created an oven with windows.

They try to mount those temperature sensors in your car in a way that won't be too influenced by thermodynamics, but there's no way to change physics. Your vehicle sits there and bakes all day/ That's why when you first start it up, that temp is usually unbelievable.

Why The Temperature Drops When You Drive

Of course, once you start driving, the reading comes down to a more accurate measurement, even if it's still a lot hotter than your weather app says it is.

Neither thermometer is necessarily wrong.

They're answering slightly different questions.

One is telling you what the air temperature is under ideal conditions... The other is telling you what the temp is where you are at that specific moment.

Lawton hit 110 degrees yesterday at our local weather station. It's in a field by the airport. During my drive from Downtown back over to the Westside around 5 PM yesterday, my car said it was 114 degrees near Eisenhower High School. Neither of those measurements were wrong.

Now you know why they call cities and towns "heat islands."