It’s Not the Humidity, It’s the Heat

This is a topic about which people have very strong feelings. After the past week of sweltering heat across the Corn Belt, I just couldn’t resist.

So first of all, if you’re still reading after seeing the headline, please accept my gratitude. I’d like to meet all three of you sometime for a cup of coffee in an air-conditioned diner!

Yes, I know, I know. The general wisdom is that it’s the humidity that’s the problem on these hot summer days in the Heartland, not the heat. But you’ll notice that nobody complains about the humidity when it’s partly cloudy and 63 degrees. Interesting!

I’ve been to lots of low humidity places. I’ve dropped down from Phoenix to I-8, turned west, and passed through Gila Bend, Dateland, Yuma, through El Centro, California and on to San Diego. In August.

I’ve driven the magnificent Central Valley of California from Modesto through Fresno, Turlock, Tulare, Delano, and Bakersfield, then on south. In August. On that trip I half expected to see the Devil himself hop out from behind a heat-stricken shrub and offer to escort me below where it’s cooler.

I’ve stalked desert jackrabbits near Lancaster, California then driven from Palmdale through Victorville, Barstow, and on to Las Vegas and St. George, Utah. In August. I’ve gone the opposite direction, too.

I drove west on I-80 through Evanston and Rock Springs, Wyoming, then to Salt Lake City, through Wendover, Utah, to Elko and then to Winnemucca, Nevada. In Wyoming I kept saying to myself that there would never be a shortage of dry rocks in the United States. I slept in the car in a park in Winnemucca, hearing the coyotes yipping during the night, then on to Reno, Truckee, and through the Donner Pass, then on to Sacramento and down to the San Francisco Bay. I paused at the edge of the bay to get my bearings and happened to open the window. Suddenly it was only 65 degrees and humid from being in close proximity to salt water. I quit squinting. 

Then I went across on the San Mateo Bridge and into the delightful little town of Belmont on the peninsula. Belmont and the Palo Alto area was like another world. It was chilly in the mornings and cleared off to highs of around 70 for the afternoon. Did I mention it was in August? To get home both times I had to drive back across the deserts of California, Nevada, Utah, and semiarid western Colorado. I made that trip twice. What was I thinking?

The folks made the trip west from St. Louis along Route 66 in August, 1943. Yes, it was the real Route 66 back in the day when it went through every little town along the way. They were in a borrowed 1941 Plymouth, which had a factory-installed heater, but no air conditioning. They were driving to California with two other officers so my dad could report for duty. They dropped down through Springfield, Missouri and Galena, Kansas to Tulsa and Oklahoma City, then Amarillo, Tucumcari, Santa Fe, Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Flagstaff, then Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino, just like in the song. Don’t forget Winona and Needles, California. My dad liked the desert after his training at Ft. Bliss, Texas, but my mother, 21 at the time, had never been out of the humid Midwest. It became a test of endurance. My dad drove all night because it was so much cooler then and the others drove during the day. They only stopped for the night one time, in Missouri. She lived to be 98, but she never fully recovered from that trip. As she said, the hood of that car was hot enough to fry an egg. Of course, there was a push-up vent right in front of the windshield. The vent collected air pushed into it by the movement of the car, directing it down onto the floor under the dashboard. The dry air came right across the hood of the car before entering the vent. Deluxe!

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I still have the T shirt from the Sonora Desert Museum, and had the sunburn and the dehydration to go with it

About 1973 I took a flight from Indianapolis to Denver (on a DC 6!), arriving in the early afternoon. In August. I think it was my only four-engine prop commercial flight. It all seemed normal to get on a plane 70 miles from where I grew up, fly a thousand miles, then prepare to disembark. I was fine until I walked outside through the terminal doors. The humidity was only 15% and it was about 90 degrees out there. My chest muscles seemed to be working, but I wasn’t drawing much air. My nose instantly felt like it was lined with dry construction paper. My voice was raspy. I was so uncomfortable I began to wonder if there would be a pool at the motel, something that never held any attraction before or since. I couldn’t seem to sweat. The entire few days I was out there it was negligible humidity with high temperatures. I ordered a Denver omelet one morning just to be authentic. If my nose had been working better I might have enjoyed it more.

Headed back, no matter what time of day I drove the dry miles from San Diego to Phoenix, there was an expectation that when I got out of the Valley of the Sun and turn north onto I-17 maybe, just maybe I could survive until I got to Flagstaff. I left the windows rolled up on purpose until I pulled into a service station in the pines. I opened the door and stepped out into bright sunshine and very low humidity, but suddenly, instead of blinding heat, it’s only 68 degrees here. It’s the heat, not the humidity, that gets me.

So yep, I’ve been there, I still have the T shirt from the Sonora Desert Museum, and had the sunburn and the dehydration to go with it. Next time, I’ll just go to St. Louis. Lord knows that will meet anybody’s definition of hot, but at least I can breathe there.

Continental weather is prone to extremes

In other words, dry heat means it’s hot as Hell. And you notice in those ads for vacations in Hell, nobody mentions oppressive humidity, just heat. Hot, dry, nose-drying heat. That’s why they call it Hell.

In the desert, most everything that wants to survive tends to hide in the shade or under a rock in the daytime, and that goes for people, too. Work starts early and finishes early. It makes sense. Staying in Phoenix a time or two, I would go outside about 9 PM to see how much it had cooled down. Hmmmmm. Not much. When people vacation in Phoenix, it’s usually in February or March when there’s less danger of having to hit your Life Alert button and shout with a raspy voice: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up or sweat!” In that kind of climate, sensible people who aren’t desperate for wages just stay home from about 10 AM to 7 PM. Retirees just stay home. People who must go somewhere dash from hot cars to air conditioned buildings. Others leave cars running to stay cool while they’re shopping. Lots of people who are desperate for wages arrange to work at night, or at least in the air condo. Ever wonder why they have a siesta in Mexico? Right. It ain’t because of the humidity.

So here are some ways I explain the seeming determination to blame our summer discomfort on the humidity rather than the heat.

Continental weather is prone to extremes because land masses warm and cool faster than large bodies of water. Here in the Corn Belt there’s lots of corn planted because corn loves humidity and heat, especially at night. There are phrases like “Hot as the Fourth of July.” There are songs like O.C. Smith’s Little Green Apples that explain how it always rains in Indianapolis in the summer time. Indy is in the humid eastern part of the country.

Now I’ll go way out on a limb. The humidity actually makes us more comfortable when it’s hot. Our bodies react to overheating by producing sweat. Hmmmm. “Perspiration” does sound more delicate, doesn’t it? That perspiration comes out on our skin when the body senses we are too warm, and even without a breeze, helps us cool down. The process of evaporation provides heat exchange with the atmosphere, taking heat off our skin and making us feel cooler. Mind you, our bodies don’t react to humidity, but to heat. When I got off the plane in Denver that day, I was uncomfortable, I later decided, because the sweat wouldn’t linger on my skin long enough to cool me like it did in the humid Midwest. Maybe my reaction to the dry heat was to conserve moisture by not sweating, but since that day I’ve never been comfortable in dry heat. In a kitchen we call it roasting because that oven is hot and dry. I’m not a fan of roasting, especially if I’m the roastee.

My interpretation is that the humidity, although noticeable, makes it possible for perspiration to linger on the skin long enough to make us damp, and when the slightest breeze hits that moisture, the first sound I make is “Ahhhh!” The effect is even more noticeable when the breeze is cool. Come out of a warm lake without a beach towel handy when there’s a fresh breeze and you’ll know what I mean. Come out of a hot, humid parking lot and into a supermarket when they’ve got the AC set on about 65 degrees, and the cooling effect is almost shocking. It feels like walking into a meat locker, we sometimes say. Working in that cooled area doesn’t feel so cool after a while because we stop perspiring because the temperature is lower. It’s the heat that gets us, not the cooling effect of humidity.

Last week was the last week of July. That means here in the Heartland it’s supposed to be hot and humid so we can have lots of corn. It’s July. It’s supposed to be hot and humid, thank God!

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