Why does a 80F day in southern states like Mississippi, Tennessee, etc. feel so much hotter than an 80F day in Los Angeles?
This is a result of another one of those “feels like” temperatures. Here’s how it works: The human body keeps itself from overheating by sweating. This sweat is evaporated. Evaporation removes heat which makes one feel cooler. High humidity decreases the atmosphere’s ability to evaporate (it just can’t hold all that water vapor), so your sweat doesn’t evaporate as readily on really humid days, and you don’t cool off as efficiently. The result is. . . you feel hotter. The temperature may be 80, but you may feel like it’s 90. The “deep south” tends to have higher humidity on average during the day than here in L.A. That is why the days seem so much hotter back there! There just so happens to be a handy little chart for figuring out humidity and human discomfort : (The source for this chart is from Frederick K. Lutgens & Edward J. Tarbuck’s, “The Atmosphere 7th Edition) Again, these are “feels like” temperature values, and should be used as a guide, but not as a literal reference.
