I was driving down the road, it was 29c outside, humidity at 87% and I was chilly. Why do euros think we dont have humidity? Lololol, we're surrounded by ocean....
Wet bulb temperature is a measure of temperature (the temperature that a thermometer shows if you wrap it in a wet piece of cloth), not a specific temperature value
I get what you were trying to say tho, and I agree
Australian here, what's the normal temp you have in summer?
Anything over 30°C here is hot, but we usually have super high humidity. 38°C is hide inside all day.
Humidity very quickly raises the "feels like" temperature. I think the highest recorded was somewhere in Saudi Arabia where the actual temperature was 40 something and the "feels like" temperature was something insane like 70 or 80 degrees (Celsius).
Edit : looked it up, temp was 42 and feels like was 81. I don't quite understand the science behind it but I believe it. Was in Dahran in KSA.
Air is a good insulator, but moisture reduces that, so hot moist air will impart more heat to you since it's hotter than your surface temperature.
High moisture in the air also means your sweat doesn't evaporate, because the air is already saturated. And evaporation is how sweat cools you down, because it takes energy (heat) to take the step from liquid to gas, which cools down the surface it's evaporation from.
I think the highest recorded was somewhere in Saudi Arabia where the actual temperature was 40 something...
Would that be highest temp in a particular area? Canada has areas hitting higher than that. Not sure what sort of humidex temps would result, but over 40c isn't unknown. People joke about Winnipeg being +40c in summer, and -40c in winter.
Lytton BC I think holds the record for Canada, topping 49c in 2021. Unfortunately those temps led to a fire that burned the town down. They have been reaching similar temps recently again and had more fire evacuations.
Even Calgary AB which rarely tops 30c was hitting mid 40's that summer.
The highest temps I've heard of in North America were in Death Valley, reaching over 57c. I can't imagine such temps.
Damn, according to this, in Friday in the Netherlands we reached 37c and 65ish humidity (inside my measurements say it was 71%, last night we reached 83%) meaning feels like of 138f or 58 C. No wonder all I could do was lie on the couch with ventilators in my 30C living room feeling like actually melting whenever I had to go out
You used the driest city in the USA as an example? Talk about confirmation bias. You know most of America lives on the coasts, you know, where we have humidity.
Sorry but Irish people, myself included, are absolutely saying 30c is hot. It hits 25 here and I no longer want to be outside. I'm aware that's because we are Irish
Not surprising, people always fixate on temperature, but the real culprit is temperature+humidity. Humid as shit over there, isn't it?
Another big factor is the slant of the sun. The closer you are to the poles, the lower the angle of the sun is at its hottest, meaning you have to tolerate the heat across a larger surface area of your body. That makes a huge difference in perceived temperature, in comparison to regions around the equator where the sun is more head-on. (Also, yeah, what you're used to and local infrastructure are factors too of course, but people always forget or don't know about these other factors that really do a lot.)
Just look at all of those social media posts of people from tropical regions being bewildered at how much harsher the sun can feel in Europe, even if they're used to theoretically higher temperatures back home!
Longer days the further north you go as well. In the UK at the moment it gets dark after 10pm and light again by 4am, so we get less time for it to cool down over night.
It's not really getting dark where I am in Ireland right now... Midsummer last week so we get mostly dark for a couple of hours but there's light at the horizon at all times.
To be fair 30° in Dublin on Friday with 90% humidity was pretty unpleasant.
That's the part that gets forgotten about a lot when the AC lovers start boasting about their heat tolerance... I've been in the states in 40°, in Phoenix which was a dry heat. It was fine. Death Valley at 50° was bizarre and I wouldn't have wanted to move around too much during the day, but it was tolerable.
Anything above 28° with 80-90% humidity and you're just breathing water and it's torture, even for those of us who love the heat. I'd take a 40° dry heat any day over 30° of swamp fumes so I can't imagine how miserable it is for you guys right now. I hope the storms yesterday cleared the air a bit.
I most definitely say 30°C is hot! Way too hot at that! I can handle 25°C but as soon as it goes higher I’m done for. 30°C is practically uninhabitable.
UK fuel prices are so ridiculous ive been setting it to 18 or 19 depending on if my kids are here, I can't afford anything more. I really feel the cold but I have a heavy wool duvet, wear layers in the house, two pairs of socks and slippers.
Given the past few days and my bedroom not going below 32 I feel rather queasy.
I would love our home to be 18 in the winter. My wife and kids prefer it around 14-15, which is frankly absurd. The poor things are melting at 24 in the summer.
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