Okay, here’s a great opportunity for someone to audition to be my Weather Guy.

So, both yesterday and today I parked downtown at the AEI building. On the drive to work and the drive home, on both days, my car’s thermometer said that it was anywhere from 9 – 16 degrees hotter in the Northwest Washington leafy suburbs than it was in the concrete jungle of downtown D.C. I live fairly close to the Potomac river but at what I have to think is a higher elevation than downtown.

I always thought inner cities were supposed to be hotter — heat sinks and all that — and trees-plus-water equaled marginally extra coolness. And isn’t that a pretty big differential for just a couple miles? So, what gives?

Update: Everyone wants to blame my car’s thermometer. Apparently they are notoriously unreliable. Fair enough, though I doubt that’s it. I also doubt that most of the other theories voiced so far are right. Lots of folks suggest it’s because the car was parked at a garage or started cold etc. But the trend (cooler downtown, hotter in ‘burbs) was repeated four times (twice downtown-bound, twice home-bound). The readings may inaccurate but the trends were consistent. Still waiting.

Update II: Enough with the “heat rises” explanation. Heat does rise, but in my experience higher elevations are cooler. Ever drive from Flagstaff to Phoenix? Ever see snow on top of mountains?