STORM2K

We could have our first 100ºF day of the Spring either Sunday or Monday.

With mid 70s dewpoints (RH isn't as good a comfort indicator, it falls as the temp rises), and anyone who claims it is 95ºF with 95% humidity is taking a hot shower, is saying the dewpoint is 93ºF. Which never happens, anywhere. Low 80s dewpoints, that I have seen on the most humid days in August in Houston.

Even the deep tropics usually stay with dewpoints in the 70s.


On the subject of dry heat, I have worked in the sand dunes, on oil wells, wearing NOMEX coveralls, for evil Alsatian French oil service companies, West of Midland, when it was 118ºF. Relative humidty was probably below 10%, dewpoint in the 20s or 30sF. 118ºF. 48º for our Canadian friends. It may have been a "dry heat", but it still was really harsh.

Yet the Huaco and other Indigenous Americans lived there before they invented AC.

Oh, reminds me, my Mexican-American wife, (her Dad is born in Mexico, but a US citizen, her mother is Mexican-American and 1/8th Apache) sunburned like a big dog at Splashtown in Spring. (Edit- "Big Dog" doesn't sound right, maybe "Not too big fluffy love bunny"). 2 youngest at daycare, son #1, as brown as his mother, just a little darker. Daughter, one and only, a "huera" (white girl), mild sunburn. Mom forgot suntan lotion.

I knew from being in the Navy that African Americans can tan (shirt tan lines and lighter lower legs, ankles and feet below the sock line), and now I know Brown people, like my wife, can burn.

Word to the wise.

Think 118F with 10% RH is harsh, try the same with 25% RH. We see temperatures in the 110 or so range with dewpoints in the 60's during the monsoon and yet because the RH is low we always hear the dry heat phrase. People don't realize that for Tucson a dewpoint of 66F has the same amount of moisture in the air as a sealevel DP in the low 70's because of our elevation-even worse in Sierra Vista which is 2000 ft higher. Considering that we have seen local dews in the low 70's here and there, the air can become quite gooey during the monsoon.

Steve

Aslkahuna wrote:Think 118F with 10% RH is harsh, try the same with 25% RH. We see temperatures in the 110 or so range with dewpoints in the 60's during the monsoon and yet because the RH is low we always hear the dry heat phrase. People don't realize that for Tucson a dewpoint of 66F has the same amount of moisture in the air as a sealevel DP in the low 70's because of our elevation-even worse in Sierra Vista which is 2000 ft higher. Considering that we have seen local dews in the low 70's here and there, the air can become quite gooey during the monsoon.

Steve

This is why I love have pro-mets like you here at S2K!! I can learn something new almost everyday!! I never even thought that AZ could have anything except "dry heat".

I just spent a week in San Antonio.....high 90's (F) all week....low humidity.....it wasn't bad at all. I'll take the dry heat over the southern Mississippi humidity and heat any day.