When reporting downtown Sacramento temperatures, most news agencies turn to the National Weather Service, the government agency in charge of telling us the temperature. Well, frozen pipes come to mind, given the weather of recent days. It's very important to know when it is going to freeze. The discrepancy may most affect suburban residents in such places as Roseville, Davis, Elk Grove and El Dorado Hills. As a rule, the suburbs tend to be cooler than the city.
Cities collect and hold heat in buildings, streets and other man-made things.
Anyone who has walked barefoot in the summer can tell you pavement is hotter than grass. Since the weather service does not measure temperature in the suburbs, television meteorologists rely on weather enthusiasts to report the temperature in their communities. Junior weathermen are great but the forecasts still rely on the official equipment downtown and at the airports. Loffman, a weatherman for 22 years and author of two books on Sacramento weather, said he and KGO radio's meteorologist Lloyd Lindsay Young have been trying for years to get the weather service to correct its readings. The official Sacramento temperature sent out to the world reports the conditions at Sacramento Executive Airport, but many weather reporters prefer to use the downtown reading.