It's not just the heat, it's the humidity. This phrase that everyone knows probably couldn't be more true this summer, even though it's hot outside right now.
Many of you have are wondering why the humidity has been so high, and when it will stop. We're in the third week of a pattern dominated by a Bermuda High over the Atlantic; this high is pumping heat and humidity north. There's no real comfortable air in sight, at least in the next seven to ten days.
I was wondering how humid it's been, so I went back and looked at the last ten years of dew points in Portland, and tallied up the number of 70 degree dew point days, which is when it feels like Florida.
So far this year, we're at 21 days -- that number will grow and may become the highest in the last ten years by the time this week is through.
But the other crazy thing about this summer's humidity is that it's come in such long stretches. The beginning of July we had four days in a row of high humidity -- we thought that was bad, but now we're in our second stretch of seven days or more of high humidity, and we are still counting.
A lot of you have been asking why inland areas have been hit by storms several times, while the coast has been largely dry. The answer has two reasons. One, the sun heats the ground, that air rises up and forms clouds. Sometimes those clouds can grow tall enough to form thunderstorms, a process that happens inland, away from the ocean.
Then as the storms move closer to the coast, they encounter more stable air, thanks to the southerly wind coming in off the water, and start to die out. This is why places like the Midcoast and Downeast could actually use some rain to cool things down, while it's rained several times in the last few weeks in the mountains.
Stay cool everyone!