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When people say dry heat feels cooler than warm heat? Is that really true? I mean, no matter how dry it is, anything hotter than 85F feels very hot. I do think humidity makes things worse when it's only mildly hot though. Even 65F can feel muggy and hot if it's humid enough.
For absolutely sure humidity makes high tempatures harder to bare. I can take 100F quite well if it's very dry but just try it if the humidity is really high. You can hardly move. When it's dry our persperation dries quickly on the skin and cools us. When it's humid it doesn't and we get all sweaty and damp. YUK. Where I live it's very humid in the summer and most people have air conditioning more for the porpose of drying out the air rather than cooling it.
Humid heat is far far worse. The only way I can describe to any degree of accuracy is that to me dry heat feels like you are under the heat source, that its coming at you. Humid heat envelopes you and is much more intense. Ive been in a high humidity 88 in New Orleans that was worse than any 100 degree day on the west coast. Ive been in a show house/open house in Sacramento on a 90 degree day, with no air conditioning/windows open and it was fine, but here in the DFW area if its 90, the windows are shut and the ac on...
The short answer to the question "is the promotion of dry heat BS" is yes and no for me. However even that does not capture my views on the subject. Dry heat is too often promoted as if the lack of humidity negates the discomfort of the heat. That is bogus. All "heat", dry or humid, is hot, and to me uncomfortable, and for me it also has very deleterious health effects if it is over a certain threshold, for me usually 70 Fahrenheit to trigger mild nausea and headache (although I can push it up to 80 F with acclimatization (but that's it)). For me it takes a temperature usually above 85 or so to really impact my functioning, as opposed to merely having a horrible headache.
But anyway, the bottom line for me is that all heat is uncomfortably hot, but humidity adds a whole new level of misery on top of the heat.
Aside from the unpleasantness of breathing being more difficult, a lot of sweat that doesn't evaporate, the sensation of condensation on eyes, hair, and the like, humidity also intensifies the heat as it relates to its effect on most humans' bodies, and it also eliminates the shelter of the shade. Humidity distributes the heat more efficiently than dry air such that it is still horribly uncomfortable in the shade - no relief is offered, although it usually even worse in direct sunlight (and the sunlight aggravates the sweat, you know the drill). With dry heat, for me, the only "suffering" is the heat itself, and the unpleasant humidity is removed (for me dry conditions are optimal, relative humidity near 20%). Shade and sunlight temperature differences are greater, and the heat in the sun is not distributed over to the relatively cooler shaded areas like it is in humid conditions. So dry heat can be considered, in a way, to be more pleasant then humid heat.
The main catch to that notion is that, although humid heat is worse than dry heat, again, you still have heat both ways, and above a certain level it virtually does not matter if the heat is humid or dry. If the temperature is 90 or 100 Fahrenheit it doesn't matter, as both are intolerable, although the humid 90 F or 100 F will be worse. I would especially like to point out, for instance, if the heat index is 120 Fahrenheit, I don't care if it is dry or humid - it is horrible and for me life-threatening (and for most others quite unpleasant) either way.
In the end, I agree with the originator of this topic - that anything over 85 Fahrenheit feels very hot, regardless of humidity, but at the same time humidity makes it worse. So for me, some notions of dry heat as being somehow comfortable at 90, 100, or 110 is completely bogus, and regardless of what your personal threshold is, keep in mind that low humidity is not a cure-all, and any claims of dry heat being comfortable should be taken cautiously.
A muggy 65 degrees can be hell for me, whereas a dry 85 degrees is perfectly comfortable. No thanks, can't do the humidity. Even Seattle's modest amounts of humidity during the summer can really get to me.
I don't think there's much of a way for 65°F and humid to feel hot. Though, there's a chance if doing lots of physical work that I'll sweat a bit more.
Dry heat is usually nicer, but after a point dry heat can feel worse than humid heat at a lower temperature. Plus, dry heat tend tends to suck the water out of you.
For me... if I had to choose.. I'd take humid heat over dry heat.. I think above about 90F you really notice the difference.
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