Why we should read the Dew Point

Here is why looking at the humidity outside to understand how yucky it feels is misleading. We should be watching the dew point temperature to tell how sticky it feels to our skin.

The humidity can be high and the dew point low and it feels great and vice versa. Look at our current weather here. It is only 75 and should feel great, but our dew point is 73 AND our humidity is 95%. This makes it feel sopping wet outside even with our 8mph southeasterly wind.

Billings, Montana where my BIL  works, it is 56 degrees and has a humidity rating of 88%. It should feel cool and damp, right? Maybe even cold for us Gulf Coast Texans.

Wrong. It has a dew point of 53 degrees and with a 6 mph wind, it feels downright dry, cool, and pleasant. Montana folks would swim in this weather if the rivers and lakes weren't about 35 degrees. In fact, Montana folks fish in the water instead of swimming in it.
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Overcoming Our Biggest Obstacle

Life is indeed like a box of chocolates in that you never know what is on the horizon. You plan for the day when you do not have to go the office, or the company truck, or the commitment to work in a chemical plant on Christmas. Man, we have it all figured out, or at least we thought we did. I've always been told, "Do everything you want to do before you retire, because at that point, you will be physically limited. Bah humbug! Who listens to advice anyway.

Now I want to go on record and say after 15 months of a steady diet of VA visits and pills out the wahzoo, not to mention many visits to the acupuncturist and chiropractor... I was handed a clean bill of health. Not only that, but my cholesterol numbers are in the excellent category and there is no sign of colon cancer or diabetes. A full bank of blood tests reveal that I have everything in fine working order, so why my lamentation about activity?

The main obstacle I now face is you got it, the heat and humidity! Wow, where did this come from? We went from the 40's in April and early May straight into this hell? I wrote about this phenomenon about a month ago, but it needs repeating. The walkers behind my house in CV were having to get a number to walk when it was cool and now it has thinned out exponentially.

My friend Jose likes to get in his 6 miles every day and has had to resort to getting on the trail at the crack of dawn and then because the dew point is at 77, he is drenched before he crosses the first mile marker. We chatted the other day about the real villain concerning our weather and its not heat or humidity, per say. Its the danged dew point. Why don't our weather prognosticators tell us this number? Its because we are not real smart and we need the "real feel" number so we know how we are feeling.

"How you feeling fella" How on earth is being told a number tell anyone how they feel? I would rather they tell me the dew point and then I'll know exactly how I feel. Its a simple scale to be honest. If it is below 60, it feels comfortable outside even if the humidly is relatively high and the temp is in the lower 80's. Take this same temp and humidity and raise the dew point to 71 and it feels oppressive and uncomfortable outside. Remember in early May when it was 83 outside and we had a wind? Yup, you almost needed a light jacket and that is because the dew point was very low.

By the way, this morning the weather person is going to flash maps and wavy illusions on the screen and tell you it is 78 degrees outside, with a slight wind and 88% humidity. The humidity sounds a bit high, but the temp is below 80, so with the dab of wind, it should feel good, right? Wait a second, the real Feel temp is 87! This is because the danged dew point is 75 and that means it feels oppressive. Can it get worse?  Yes, raise the DP to 76+ and now it feels miserable.

So, what can a poor boy do except go to an air conditioned gym to sweat with the other retired people? You could say, "Well, I'll just wait to cut the grass at 6pm when it isn't as hot, but guess what? The DP is going to be right where it started and that means you are going to sweat like a proverbial stoolie.

So, I have the clean bill of health, so lets take off real quick like and do something entertaining, right? Well, this is where aging once again pulls tricks on you. Back in the day, you would simply walk out to your car and blast off. Now days leaving means grabbing your phone, wallet/purse, bathroom visit, bottle of vitamin water, making sure you have your meds, and the list goes on and on until you plop down in your comforter and order pizza.

 

While you are waiting for the grub to arrive, you decide to check the mail and by the time you get back into the house, you are drenched. I remember spending a week in Wyoming back in 1986. The month was September and up there it was often cold enough that you had to be careful. We flew back into Houston and our first impression was the smell of mildew and this was September. To new arrivals, Houston smells like spores and fungi and stuff that is disgusting.

"How do youse guys handle this heat?" One fellow from Pennsylvania asked? "Easy, we stay inside for 4 months." was my answer and it was pretty much the truth. Now don't take me wrong; I prefer heat over cold, but this combination of moist air and high temperature can really dampen the old adventure spirit. This is why come July, most of us who garden have pretty much given up trying to keep everything perfect. Now we are just trying to survive. "Well, the tamaters are gone! They died of heat exhaustion. There's always next year."

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Weather, whether, wither, or whatever

Is there anything more consistently misrepresented than the weather? For ages it has been asserted that the weather person has the most secure job in the world. The reason being is they almost never get it totally right for where we are and yet, they remain employed. A 50% chance of rain could either mean it will be sunny all day, or bring a deluge worthy of Noah and his big wooden boat full of animal pairs.

In a grocery line the other day I was reminded that the weather has been unpredictable for as long as history has been recorded and also possibly predicted impending doom or even the end of the world. I wonder if the folks in Hawaii are thinking this very thing right now. Or how about the incredible fires that swept through California this past year?

I don't want to get into the whole hurricane flooding thing, as for many are still living in a cardboard box in our driveway, or a van down by the river. The weather really uckedsay this past year for many, if you will forgive my Pig Latin.

I hate hurricanes and tropical storms. I remember after Hurricane Ike, I drove west on I-10 and it wasn't until I got to Columbus 100 miles west that I didn't see evidence of its fury. I remarked that this would be a great place to live. Of course I would never move there as they simply do not need or want a Columbus Bert disturbing them. Besides, I love it here, whether I wither in the heat or whatever.

The weather predictors actually do a good job of predicting Houston's moist weather, but not ours. They cannot accurately predict the effect our 7 bays is going to do here, unless a storm is so big that it blankets the entire large area surrounding Houston. This has become a joke with my friends who drive to Baytown for a geocaching event. The weatherman predicts severe storms in the Houston area and they stay home. Meanwhile, those of us who assemble to hike in the woods or whatever, enjoy sunshine and little or no rain.

I tell them Baytown has a micro-climate due to the waterways around us. Storms come in out of the Gulf and hit Alvin and head west toward Sugar Land and abruptly turn north straight for Jersey Village. For some reason, it turns for Greenspoint and heads east passing north of us on I-10 before hitting Winnie in a boomerang movement. It has happened so many times that I don't understand why it hasn't been noted. This is how tropical storm Allison did H-Town. Some places on the west side got 36 inches of rain and here at the Orbiting Command Ship Central, we only got 9 inches.

Another issue I have with the way weather is predicted, or explained to us is RealFeel. "The RealFeel Temperature is an index that describes what the temperature really feels like. It is a unique composite of the effects of temperature, wind, humidity, sunshine intensity, cloudiness, precipitation and elevation on the human body--everything that affects how warm or cold a person feels". I reckon we are all too stupid to do the math that 95 degree heat and 90% humidity is going to really feel yucky.

When did we educated American people become too mentally slow that we need everything interpreted for us? It has reached the point that a lot of people believe we have 100% humidity all the time, which is simply not true. I would rather they gave us the real temperature and the humidity factor, or pushing the envelope, the dew point. While the way they arrive at the dew point is complicated, the scale is not.

If the dew point goes above 61, it starts to become sticky and by 66 it is going to be uncomfortable. 71-75 is our normal hot Summer mornings when the air feels oppressive, even though it is 75 degrees outside. 76+ DP is miserable. There. That's all it takes and if the weather people began pushing this scale, it would give us a better understanding than them trying tell us how we RealFeel. RealFeel is a poor attempt to explain how we will feel outside in my opinion. Anyway, the next time someone complains about the weather, just nod in agreement. How do they know how it makes you feel anyway?

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