Are We Setting a Humidity Record This Summer?
Another streak of hot, humid weather is hitting the Southcoast (and much of Southern New England) leaving many wondering if it's ever been this continuously humid before.
You can't scroll through social media without seeing some sort of comment about the weather, so how bad is it really?
I asked ABC Meteorologist Jeff Desnoyers if we were having some sort of record setting summer for humidity. And as he informed me, humidity is not a record weather folks really keep track of.
So although there is no way to compare humidity season to season like we can temperature or rainfall, he did let me know that we've had more stagnant weather patterns than usual this summer.
That means once the humid air shows up on the Southcoast, there's no new weather pattern to push it out. So things are staying humid a lot longer.
And with plenty of days in the upper 80s, it is feeling super sticky and gross.
Luckily it is not a record breaking summer heat wise, despite how things feel most days.
According to NPR, one of the worst summers ever was in 1896 when a 14 day heat wave caused the deaths of nearly 1500 people from New York to Boston.
It was two weeks of temperatures in the 90s and even 100s...and no air conditioning or even powered fans existed back then.
So despite how icky it may feel, at least we have electricity and modern technology to make it much more bearable than before.