Firsthand Weather
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The green-shaded areas currently have higher dew points right now than Miami, Florida. All-time dew point records are being broken in the Northeast.
With dew points so high, the heat index or wet bulb globe temperature are more appropriate metrics for capturing the significance of this event. It gets in the 80s and 90s all the time, especially in the South, but with the high humidity pushing above the 90-95th+ percentile, this is what makes this event significant compared to climatology (aka, in most of our lifetimes).
I know, I know….I’ve seen all of the comments on our posts about, “well, it’s summer” or “you’re just using the heat index to make things seem worse.” While I understand and sympathize with those that have trust issues with the media, these are real metrics, developed by research meteorologists, that are legit. You’ve just got to know when it’s most appropriate to use them, and this is definitely one of those cases.
Graphic created by Meteorologist Ben Noll.
-Matthew