“Look at that great big ball of fire,” my lovely bride said, admiring the sun rising over McNeil Island this morning. “That is just beautiful.”
My bride has never been one for hyperbole. She is a straight shooter and pretty much calls it as she sees it.
Well, my love, right you are. Again.
Good morning Longbranch.
It looks like our string of beautiful days will continue today. Even the fog is burning off quicker this morning than the previous three days. It is already 57 degrees at quarter ’til six. Depending on which weather geek you follow, our high for today will either be 82 or 84 degrees.
Either way it will be another scorcher on the tip of the Key Peninsula. From the look of the forecast, we can expect this weather to hang with us at least until Tuesday next week. Now that is a forecast worth its humidity.
Speaking of humidity, the air will be damp and heavy at 93 percent humidity. But exactly what does that mean?
Don’t feel bad. I had to look it up too. All these years I would throw the term humidity around as if I knew what it really meant. I knew that it had something to do with water vapor in the air. But that is where my know-how ends.
But the percentage figure we see the weather geeks throw around like dead weight is relative humidity. According to weatheronline.co.uk, “Relative humidity is the ratio of the actual mass of vapour in the air to the mass of vapour in saturated air at the same temperature.”
That is the icky, sticky feeling you get in summer and the heavy air you feel in the dead of winter. It is also the basic ingredient for clouds to form and our fog to roll out.
Simply, it is water on Earth. Here is a very good explainer from usatoday.com:
“The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Earth has about 326 million cubic miles of water. This includes all of the water in the oceans, underground and locked up as ice.
“Only about 3,100 cubic miles of this water is in the air, mostly as water vapor, but also as clouds or precipitation, at any one time, the Geological Survey estimates.
“While this is a small share of Earth’s water, our planet would be very different without it. If Earth’s air didn’t contain as much humidity as it does, our weather would be like that of Mars: No clouds (except dust), no rain, sleet or snow, no thunder and lighting, no fog. And, without all of this water in all of its forms, Earth’s life, if there were any at all, but be as hard to find as life on Mars is to find even signs of.”
So now we know.
Longbranch Chronicles 