CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — It was 92° Sunday and we may not make it to 80 today (Monday) thanks to a cold front. Will it be 'cold' to you? What about cool? Maybe, maybe not. But there will be a shift in temperature from warm to cold. There are four types of front having to do with temperature - cold, warm, stationary, and occluded. I choose to always call a transition from warm air to cooler air a 'cold' front, regardless of temperature. When looking at a meteorology textbook, you won't find 'cool front.'
For example, a front moving through that drops temperatures from the middle 90s to the middle 80s would be a cold front by definition because you are replacing warmer air with comparably cooler air. I know folks would, and often do rebuttal by saying, 'well 80s are still warm, how is this a cold front?!', and that's true, but it's still a cold front by definition. The same would be true if temperatures went from the mid 60s down to the mid 40s with the passage of a front - cold front.
***Fronts aren't defined by how we perceive the air associated with them, they're defined by how the air changes as they pass.*** That's how I define them in forecasting. An extreme example would be going from 115° down to 90° - a strong cold front even though it's still hot. Some forecasters will refer to weaker cold fronts as cool fronts, and that's ok, I just choose to stick with the 'textbook' definition.
By only using cold front, it takes the subjectivity out of cold vs. cool and cool vs. cold. Where does cool end and cold begin and vice versa? Everyone perceives temperature differently. Is 63 cool and 59 cold? Is 72 cool? I know how I feel, but cool is in the eye of the beholder.
In lieu of the cold cool conundrum, I've resorted to sarcasm to get the point across in a humorous manor.
Holt, out
