Humidity in Dallas (Houston, San Antonio, Austin: school, live in, moving)

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by aceplace

One of the important assumptions of the Man Made Global Warming theory is that humidity, or water vapor, is the most powerful Greenhouse Gas. A rise in temperature will raise the absolute humidity, which traps more heat, which evaporates more water, which traps more heat... creating a sort of chain reaction of Warming.

One problem with this theory is that coastal places, such as Houston, are more humid, and should therefore be hotter, since their humidity is a Greenhouse Gas. In actual practice, they are cooler than the interior, thus presenting a challenge to the theory.

Even comparing interior cities, the theory fails. For example, Dallas and Atlanta are both interior cities, at about the same distance from the equator, and so get the same amount of solar energy. Atlanta is more humid than Dallas, both in relative terms and in absolute terms, as you can see by the heavily forested environs of Atlanta, and the drier prairie around Dallas.

In theory, Atlanta's greater amount of water vapor should make it hotter than dallas, but in actual experience it is lower.

I say it is a trade off. Atlanta rarely gets to the 100s which are common place in July and August in Dallas, yet Atlantas' higher humidity makes them both rather uncomfortable in summer.

Atlanta is closer to air masses coming up from the Atlantic and the Gulf, so southeastern weather patterns bring more moisture to Atlanta than Dallas receives. My father-in-law, a rancher and farmer in the panhandle (thus quite the expert on moisture levels in the state of TX) showed my a map of the state that showed one inch less of annual rainfall for every 30 miles west one travels in the state. It's been a while and he is no longer with us, so I believe this statistic is correct but don't know where to source that for accuracy.

The mass of Mexico to the south cuts off the flow of Gulf moisture that makes East Texas look more like the rest of the southeastern USA and West Texas more arid. Dallas falls right at that point where East Texas meets West, so it is less humid and has less annual rainfall than Atlanta.

[AK123]

Originally Posted by Cupcake77

Yet Texas has a high rate of obesity, I think Houston being 2 oe 3

Nope, according to CDC stats San Antonio is much higher than anything else in Texas. I don't think Houston is even in the top ten (outside of the Men's Cosmo Magazine rankings which is a bad source anyway...)

[Canine*Castle]

Originally Posted by aceplace

Your claim is not scientifically tenable. The only way the dew point can jump from 66 to 72 from morning to afternoon is if by magic millions of tons of water were added to the atmosphere over North Texas. This is normally impossible, short of a mass of wetter air blowing in on a weather front. . The actual dew point, in degrees, is in proportion to the amount of water in the air. The feeling of humidity or mugginess is only in proportion to the absorbancy of the air.

Can there be two different dewpoints that both give us 45% relative humidity at 5PM? No, that is physically impossible. If the dew points are different, but the temperatures are the same, say 95 degrees, then the relative humidity will also be different.

Thus, the dew point and the relative humidity are just two different ways of measuring the same thing. We say that dew point values and relative humidity values are FUNCTIONALLY related.They are not independent of one another. If you know the relative humidity and the temperature, you can then easily calculate the dew point.

If the relative humidity is at 45% at 95 degrees at 5PM, then no one will feel sticky or muggy... the air will soak your perspiration like a sponge. If it is more like 70% or 80% at 95 degrees, you will feel much more muggy, more sweaty, and your body will undergo much more stress.

During a typical summer day, with a fixed amount of water in the air, the dew point will stay the same from morning to night, assuming the entire day is sunny, no thunderstorms. The relative humidity, however is higher in the morning and lower in late afternoon, the body will be more stressed in the morning, because it cools itself by evaporating sweat. The higher the relative humidity, the harder the body has to work to avoid fever. That bodily stress is the feeling we call humid or sticky or muggy... mostly because with any physical exertion, the body is drenched with sweat.

Can you feel muggy in cold weather, with high relative humidity? Absolutely. San Franciscotemperatures can be in the 60s in July, and in the morning and evening, there are thickfogs. If you try to do anything that requires physical exertion, I guarantee that you will feel very sweaty and very humid.

I do agree that with humidity as high as it was where I live about an hour ago, 81% and a temperature of 44 degrees, I became too warm whilst working in the yard.

As far as your first paragraph is concerned, I got the information straight from wunderground. I didn't say anything about the dew point jumping from morning to afternoon. The times I looked at were the afternoon to the early evening. Gosh, the humidity and temperatures here are dreadful from April-May until October-November. I honestly don't see how anyone can think otherwise but then again, I'm one who loves the colder weather and some people hate it.

[Canine*Castle]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

I say it is a trade off. Atlanta rarely gets to the 100s which are common place in July and August in Dallas, yet Atlantas' higher humidity makes them both rather uncomfortable in summer.

Atlanta is closer to air masses coming up from the Atlantic and the Gulf, so southeastern weather patterns bring more moisture to Atlanta than Dallas receives. My father-in-law, a rancher and farmer in the panhandle (thus quite the expert on moisture levels in the state of TX) showed my a map of the state that showed one inch less of annual rainfall for every 30 miles west one travels in the state. It's been a while and he is no longer with us, so I believe this statistic is correct but don't know where to source that for accuracy.

The mass of Mexico to the south cuts off the flow of Gulf moisture that makes East Texas look more like the rest of the southeastern USA and West Texas more arid. Dallas falls right at that point where East Texas meets West, so it is less humid and has less annual rainfall than Atlanta.

My native Texas friend now lives in Atlanta and he says there is no comparison to the heat in Dallas in the summer. He chooses Atlanta weather over Dallas. Personally, I think they both stink.

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by Canine*Castle

My native Texas friend now lives in Atlanta and he says there is no comparison to the heat in Dallas in the summer. He chooses Atlanta weather over Dallas. Personally, I think they both stink.

When Atlanta is running high humidity and there is no breeze, the time it really gets to me is in the evenings. The humidity doesn't allow it to cool off as much. In Dallas, if we have a really hot day but the humidity is low, the evenings can be lovely. However there are those stretches in August where it is still 95 at midnight. That is abysmal IMO.

[movingtohoustonsoon]

Always remember even on the hottest most humid day in Dallas it could be ALOT worse! In Dhahran, Saudi Arabia they had a temperature of 108 °F with a dew point of 95 °F which resulted in a heat index of 176 °F
Keep that in mind lol!

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by Canine*Castle

I do agree that with humidity as high as it was where I live about an hour ago, 81% and a temperature of 44 degrees, I became too warm whilst working in the yard.

As far as your first paragraph is concerned, I got the information straight from wunderground. I didn't say anything about the dew point jumping from morning to afternoon. The times I looked at were the afternoon to the early evening. Gosh, the humidity and temperatures here are dreadful from April-May until October-November. I honestly don't see how anyone can think otherwise but then again, I'm one who loves the colder weather and some people hate it.

Some people are not biologically equipped to handle hot weather. In my case, heat is pretty minor to me. Humidity, on the other hand, kills me. And yes, I can tell the difference.

The value for dew point is related to the relative humidity. So measuring by relative humidity is equivalent to measuring by dew point. They are not independent phenomena.

If the relative humidity is, say, 50% that means the air can hold twice as much water as it currently has. If you took a unit volume of this air, put it in a chamber, and started cooling it one degree at a time, you would eventually get a temperature at which fog would start to form, and dew would condense on the surface of the chamber. That temperature is the dew point.

So if you know the original temperature of the air, and you know the dew point temperature, then you can use those two temperatures to calculate the relative humidity by using a simple mathematical formula.

The point is that the dew point and the relative humidity are mathematically related. Just the same way as the Fahrenheit and Centigrade temperatures are related, and actually measure the same thing.

So its incorrect to say that the dew point matters and the relative humidity doesn't. Dew point and relative humidity are just two different ways to measure, or describe, the same physical phenomenon, the ability of the air to soak up water. In this case, the water is your sweat, and the rate that your sweat is evaporated into the air is what your body senses as humidity.

[eepstein]

Austin and Dallas are similar as far as humidity levels. However, I would have to say that overall, Austin is dryer during the heat of the summer days. Dallas can still experience some horrible heat indicies that Austin never does. Generally speaking, if the temp is at or near 100 in Austin, the heat index very rarely goes above that. I have actually seen heat indexs in the Dallas area as high as 115 to 120!! Now thats oppressive!

Originally Posted by texasboi

How does the humidity in Dallas compare to that of Houston and Austins?
Austin is great, dry and low and Houston was pretty bad

[aceplace]

Originally Posted by eepstein

Austin and Dallas are similar as far as humidity levels. However, I would have to say that overall, Austin is dryer during the heat of the summer days. Dallas can still experience some horrible heat indicies that Austin never does. Generally speaking, if the temp is at or near 100 in Austin, the heat index very rarely goes above that. I have actually seen heat indexs in the Dallas area as high as 115 to 120!! Now thats oppressive!

Well, if the Austin heat index only rarely goes above the limit, maybe the Dallas heat index only rarely does as well.

Your claim is what is called "anecdotal", not credible as a generlization. Your personal assumptions, evaluations, etc, are no better than someone else who comes to an opposite conclusion.

According to the NOAA statistics I published above, the average afternoon humidity for Austin is slightly higher than for Dallas. We would expect Austin to have a slightly higher afternoon temperature than Dallas because it is 200 miles closer to the equator.

So with a slightly higher humidity, and a higher temperature, how do you get a lower heat index? Because you feel like it?

[lizziebeth]

Originally Posted by Cupcake77

Making Colorado a much better state to live in.

I don't know anyone who has been to Dallas that considers it a cool and dry city. it's considered a hot and humid city

Are you here just to try to push people's buttons? I saw you on another Dallas post being Bitter McWhiny (unless there's another Cupcake out there...don't care to double check). Do you do this for all major city threads or do you just like picking on Dallas. People refuse to move to Dallas? We have plenty of people here...many more than we really need. There are places I haven't expressed a desire to move to but I don't think I've flat out told people that I REFUSE to live in a certain place. Who are you hanging out with anyway?