What's the driest it gets in your area? (climate, recorded, humidity)

[tvdxer]

What's the lowest relative humidity you see, say, in a given year? If you know it - what was the lowest %RH ever recorded in your area?

The lowest in Duluth (airport, not harbor station) normally seen appears to be 10-20%, with hourly readings of 20-30% often seen, particularly in April and May. This most often occurs in the Spring months.

Looking back (eyeballing) the records, the lowest in...

2012 (to date) was 22% on March 15th
2011 was 18% on March 29th
2010 was 12% on April 10th and May 18th
2009 was 14% on April 14th
2008 was 22% on May 28th
2007 was 16% on May 8th
2006 was 18% on April 25th

[dunno what to put here]

Humidity below 20% is not common here. It got down to 21% in March this year.

[ilovemycomputer90]

We got down to 10% early in the month. I would guess that's probably about as dry as it can get here.

[deneb78]

I believe on very rare occasions we get humidity in Vancouver at 10-20% in some very dry air masses in the summer.. usually heat waves.

[Bottletree]

Humidity got down to 24% today.

[B87]

15% sometimes during prolonged heatwaves. Its usually closer to 30-35% in standard heatwaves though.

[j96g]

According to here, last year (2011) the lowest was 5% (Denver, CO).

Weather Station History : Weather Underground

[Ttad]

Victoria can get very low. Melbourne has been at 5%.

[Weatherfan2]

In my weather station's memory, the lowest relative humidity it's recorded since May 3rd 2011 (when it was set up) is 28%. It doesn't show the date though.

[Flight Simmer]

I've seen several occasions of 0-1% humidity and -40C dewpoints in the desert areas of South Australia, NSW and Victoria. Humidity of under 10% is actually quite common. It tends to occur mostly in spring, when SSTs are at their coolest and before the monsoon has set in.

Here's an instance of 1% humidity in Ceduna, South Australia. Scroll down to the 18th, and look in the 3pm RH column
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/201110/html/IDCJDW5009.201110.shtml (broken link)