Another Heat Wave?
By Steve MacLaughlin on June 27, 2012, 4:52pm
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I have said it before and I will say it again...the three most important numbers in weather...dew point, dew point and dew point.
Forget about relative humidity. In the summer, if you wanna know what it feels like outside, just look at the dew point. The air temperature is hot vs. cold. The dew point temperature is moist vs. dry.
The image above shows the dew points across CT as of about 5pm on Wednesday. In the summer, it very rarely gets much better. Dew points mainly in the 40s and even a couple of areas flirting with the 30s. That is incredibly dry air being ushered in by that gusty, northwesterly wind.
Thursday will be much warmer with highs in the mid to upper 80s, but we will continue with a westerly wind and that means it should still be very dry with low dew points. I expect these numbers will be a few degrees higher, but still in the comfortable range.
By Friday, as the wind goes around to the southwest behind a warm front, our next heat wave begins. By Friday, we will see dew points surging through the 60s and likely into the 70s by the weekend. When you see dew points above 70 degrees, you know that air is coming right up from the Gulf of Mexico.
Just to put it into perspective, last Wednesday we had dew points averaging about 75 degrees with a few spots popping up toward 80. It's real simple...low dew points means it feels great, high dew points mean it can get oppressive.
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