1 Eesh...I just got back from camping in the Nevada high desert and it never got as hot as that the whole week.  Low nineties one day, is all.  And it was a dry heat.  I'm not sure how humid it gets up your way.

2

In those situations I've found it helps tremendously to keep a wet washcloth on my head.

 

3

When it gets hot here it mostly doesn't get humid. Certainly nothing like the stifling hot/humid I've felt when visiting Houston or New Orleans.

And if it is somewhat more humid than normal, then we get clouds, which helps control the heat, or we get thunderstorms, which cools everything down.

One of the reasons I can tolerate this area's hot weather is that it's pretty rare. We get maybe 5 or 6 days a year like that, and we're getting three of them now. (Thursday it'll be cooler again.) But the other reason is that when it does get hot, it's dry hot. Which is much more pleasant.

4

It's actually about 92 outside, and about 85 inside, and I'm not even sweating much.

But I am paying close attention to this computer's temp readout. Don't need any more heat-fault shutdowns.

5 Due to one of the medications I have to take after The Incident, I'm annoyingly sensitive to heat and sunlight.  Anything over 80 degrees, and I get very fatigued, very quickly.  Over 90, and I get nauseous just standing still.

Throw in the humidity here in the midwest, and life gets very miserable, very fast.  We've only had two weeks where it touched 90 so far, but those two weeks there was no A/C at Duck U. 

At least I lost 15 pounds in those two weeks... so there was a small silver lining, I guess.

It's nearly 11pm as I type this, and it's 71 degrees and humid outside... and Pond Central's A/C is on.  Ugh.

6 I consider lack of air conditioning to be a sign of barbarism, like sawdust floors and hide tents. ;p (Live all your life in Texas, you would too...)

I -do not- get how the Japanese get by with so little of it. Of course, part of that is simply "they're miserable from the heat a whole lot"...

7

Smaller people have a greater surface-to-volume ratio, which means they cool off quicker.

Air conditioning is pretty much a necessity in places like Houston and LA, but it doesn't make a lot of sense up here. We get hot days, like the ones I'm about to enjoy, but not really very many. It'll hit 100 fewer than 10 days a year (and usually more like 5), and get above 90 less than 25 days a year. A lot of people here have air conditioning in their cars, but air conditioning for homes is not common at all.

Part of why I'm able to handle temps up to the low 90's comfortably here is that my work area is what was supposed to be the dining area of this apartment, and they put in a ceiling fan over it:

It was spinning when I took that picture, so the blades are kind of blurred.

It's also on the north side of the apartment building, away from the sun. And next to the deck door, which I have open, which looks out on a lawn. Between that and the window in my bedroom (on the other side of the building) there's nearly always at least some breeze. But sitting under that operating fan is good for a perceived 10 degree drop in the heat, kind of a high-temp version of "wind chill".

8 Yeah, that sort of thing always helps.  Of course, Pond Central is on the SOUTH side of the building, has no breezepath whatsoever (the only windows are on the same wall), and no ceiling fans.  Without the a/c, it's usually 5-10 degrees warmer inside than out.

9 It boggles the mind that you say Portland isn't humid.  I've lived in Los Angeles, Monterey, Boston, West Texas, and Panama (the country), with extended visits to Orlando, Charleston, St. Louis, and Minneapolis.  I'd rate Portland as just under Charleston on the humidity scale, a good step below Orlando and Panama.

According to the various weather gadgets I checked, humidity right now is 59% in Portland, 43% in Los Angeles, and 70% in Panama.  Were a lot closer to the "wet" end of that scale than the "dry".

10

I was comparing the humidity here to places like Houston and New Orleans.

The humidity is sufficiently low here so that the sweat doesn't hang on your body. It evaporates away, like it's supposed to. That's all I really care about.

If you'd ever been to the gulf coast in the summer, you'd know what I was talking about.

11 Oh, and Boston too. When I lived there I hated the hot weather because the air was so wet.

12

OK, so I just used the NWS site and got some numbers. This is for the middle of the night, of course.

Beaverton (here): 58%
Chicago: 71%
Dallas TX: 77%
Boston: 82%
Houston: 85%
New Orleans: 87%
Orlando: 90%
Memphis: 97%

And how anyone survives 97% humidity at midnight, I'll never know. That sounds like hell, especially since not everyone can afford aircon.

13 It rained this evening in Dallas, so normally it's a good bit less than that.

14 Interesting. That looks a whole lot like some of the forecasts we've been seeing around here off and on this summer. This week is nice because it is down to a cool 80-90, which probably means that I will go out walking. (Of course, since this is caused by t-storms, and I live in tornado alley...)