What's the difference between high and low temperatures?

Question

In the forecast they provide High and Low temperatures. I can only understand the highs, but what are the lows for?

Answer 1

Actually when there's little or no wind, the lowest temperature occurs about one hour after dawn, before the sun's rays start to warm the ground which then warms the air above it.

Answer 2

The low temperature is the lowest temperature that is predicted for that day, just like the highest is the highest temperature predicted for the day.

The lowest temperature of the day usually occurs just before dawn, around 4:00-5:00 in places of moderate latitude (depends where you are on Earth).

Answer 3

So you know how cold it is going to get.

Answer 4

If you go to this web page

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php...

and it is showing a row of pictures of the weather (not just text) then scroll down to near the bottom and on the right you will find Hourly Weather Graph.  This includes temps (and a lot of other stuff) for the next 2 days (and can be shifted for 2 days beyond that)   If you look at it you can see where the high and low occurs for each day.  

  If you were to look at it when a cold front is passing through, then instead of the lowest temp being at sunrise, it might be in late morning.   Knowing when and how low the temp will be is important especially when it will go below freezing for farmers and road maintenance people, but power companies need to know if heating places will take more power, etc.

  I have looked at these graphs when the high temp is at midnight and the temp just keeps getting lower and lower through the day and into the next night instead of the usual pattern of low just after dawn and high in late afternoon.

  You can look up any major city in the US and see a version of this page, although the graphics are not always there - as they weren't when I checked my city of Dallas a few minutes ago.

Answer 5

The low temp is what the temp will be the following morning when you wake up.  Like today, if they are predicting temps in the 90s for highs and 60s for lows, then when you wake up tomorrow morning, the temp will be in the 60s. The low is not always at dawn but you get the idea