Page 124 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

We then visited Ft. Myers and the Thomas Edison Estate. I was impressed with the
numerous plants growing where he was researching a source that could be used to
develop rubber. He found the Goldenrod had some potential, but he was too old to
finish the project.
After working five summers with the U.S. Weather Bureau in Jacksonville, plus 15
years reporting summer heat at WJXT, I realized that not all 90 degree days felt the
same.

When the humidity was low, it didn’t feel as hot as when the humidity was higher. As a
meteorologist, I was aware of the fact that the evaporation of moisture from our skin is
nature’s cooling mechanism. Humid air makes it more difficult for the skin’s
evaporation to cool the body. After studying the work of Orville Heavener, who coined
the word humiture, I modified his scale to our eastern U.S. humidity.

Since the moisture content of the air is reported by the dew point temperature, I
recognized that a dewpoint of 65 separated the muggy from the crisp feeling in the air.
As a result, I used a simplified method to report the humiture/heat index by adding each
degree that the dew point was above 65 to the temperature.

Here’s an example of using the dew point and temperature to determine the
humiture/heat index:

If the dew point is 75, I subtract 65 and add the 10-degree difference to the temperature.

If the temperature is 90 degrees, the additional ten degrees tells us that it feels like 100.

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