Don't move to Des Moines, Iowa unless.. (Washington: homes, schools)

[ElleTea]

Originally Posted by Tek_Freek

Yes, you do...

I was going to say the same thing.

But I LOVE humidity in the summer, so I don't mind.

[atler8]

Regarding humidity down here in the south & needing gills to breath the summer air down here: If you have regular experience there in Iowa with your glasses steaming up when you step out the door in the summer, then those of you who are claiming that you need gills to breath the summer air there are correct. If that steam up doesn't happen to you regularly in the summer, then you don't need the gills.

[ElleTea]

Originally Posted by atler8

Regarding humidity down here in the south & needing gills to breath the summer air down here: If you have regular experience there in Iowa with your glasses steaming up when you step out the door in the summer, then those of you who are claiming that you need gills to breath the summer air there are correct. If that steam up doesn't happen to you regularly in the summer, then you don't need the gills.

Happens quite a lot, actually.

[atler8]

Elle
Funny that..
I lived in Iowa for 19 years & don't recall the glasses steam up ever happening to me there until I moved south & immediately noticed it my first summer down here.

[atler8]

I should have added that our air down here is not only thick to breath in the summer but it's laden with ozone & other pollutants to the extent that our days are color coded by the severity of the problem.
Having repeatedly spent time out in Arizona, another hot spot, their summer air quality is similarly atrocious & in the winter, if you look over the valley that contains the Phoenix metro from a higher elevation point, you can see the thick layer of pollution that is a dull grey & trapped there via a temperature inversion for much of the winter.
I just love being able to see the air that I am going to breath when it's that polluted.

[ElleTea]

Originally Posted by atler8

Elle
Funny that..
I lived in Iowa for 19 years & don't recall the glasses steam up ever happening to me there until I moved south & immediately noticed it my first summer down here.

:::shrug::: I wear sunglasses all summer, and it happens all the time.

But, hey, I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about who is more humid. Who cares? It's humid there, it's humid here. So what?

[atler8]

No contest intended..
Just want folks to be aware that you up there in Iowa at least have relatively decent air quaity compared to what many of us elsewhere are breathing.
Oof course, your air quality problems there wolud be rooted in dust blowing off of the farms whereas ours are rooted in poisonous pollutants, ie. the kind where they warn residents to refrain from outdoor strenuous activity or to stay inside.

[ElleTea]

I have friends in south Florida and when they visited here one summer they were surprised that it was so humid here. They thought they were going to get a break from it, but found it to be nearly the same here as there. Same goes for a friend from Texas.

But, as I have said, I don't complain. I LOVE the humidity on a hot day. The downside is it is humid here ALL year and humidity when it is cold is not a good thing.

[fezzador]

Midwestern humidity has NOTHING on southern humidity.

[atler8]

Right on fezz at 11:08...
Actually the humidity in Iowa will vary greatly during the summer months during a "normal" year. You up there in Iowa should pay attention to it this summer & see. Remember that I said "normal" year. Sometimes it's godawfully humid up there due to a fetch of air & moisture rising northward up from The Gulf & sometimes it's delightfully dry under the influence of a Canadian air mass.
The reason for that variation, something that we RARELY experience in the summer in the deep south, is that the midwestern (Iowa specific here) air mass "normally" gets swept out regularly by cool fronts that make it on into or through that part of the country.
Elle, when your Fl. friends visited & commented about the high humidity, obviously Iowa was under the influnce of the Gulf moist air flow. If they had visited you a week later, they may have been shocked by the cool & dry air mass present at that time. Having to don a sweater in Iowa during the summer was not a rare thing when I lived there.
By the way, in my college meteorology class, it was explained that much of the success of Iowa as an agricultural breadbasket is due to the flow of that moisture-bearing air up out of the Gulf. Without it, Iowa would be more arid much like the western plains of Kansas, Nebraska & the Dakotas.
So, when Fezz & I talk about the humidity being dominating, intense & omnipresent all summer down here, it's because that's the way it is down here. We are stuck in the soup up from The Gulf. Think multiple showers &/or wardrobe changes every day if you plan to be outside doing something other than lounging at poolside.
As a personal anecdote, when I prepared to move south many years ago, people often asked me how I would manage in the summer with the higher heat & humidity in the south. Being pretty much fooled by what I thought I knew, more likely deluded by what I wanted to be the case, I told them it wasn't going to be any different living a summer down here than it was in Iowa.
I was wrong!!!
Add in the terrible air quality here & you have a major reason why I pray to get out of the south & back north.
Additionally, weather stats will also bear out that in the winter, the air mass over Iowa is normally MUCH drier than that found in the south. The only time the humidity rises noticeably in an Iowa winter is when the flow is coming in with a storm system out of the southwest that sucks Gulf moisture ahead of it & into Iowa.
Case in point, the moisture that hit Iowa in this last storm was sucked straight north out of the Gulf, hence the narrow band of snow that fell from northern Arkansas on up past Iowa.