Dewpoint June 28, 2009

Welcome to summer. This time of year you will often hear the Weather Watch 12 meteorologists talking about dewpoint temperature. We do this to give viewers an understanding of how much moisture is in the air and how that impacts how it feels outside.

Today was a perfect example of how a lower dewpoint makes it feel so much more comfortable. We had dewpoints in the forties today and the air felt very refreshing. The drier the air, the greater the ability to create evaporation. Evaporation is a cooling process. When your body sweats the evaporation helps cool your body. When we have high dewpoints, the evaporation is much slower to occur.

Last week, we had dewpoints in the lower seventies. This is very tropical air and makes the actual temperature feel much warmer due to the lack of evaporative cooling.

I prefer using dewpoint as opposed to humidity because humidity is dependent on the air temperature. (Meaning that is fluctuates considerably during the day. The dewpoint does not change nearly as much with the temperature.

The thing to remember is that in the summer when the dewpoint is in the forties and fifties, it feels comfortable. When the dewpoint reaches the sixties, it starts to feel uncomfortable. Anything higher than that is very sticky.

Have a great day and thanks for reading.

Mark Baden

First Tornado of Year June 9, 2009

The first tornado of the year happened on Monday. Thankfully, it was a very small and weak tornado. It touched down just west of Mukwonago and lasted only abou four minutes. The path was not continuous meaning it skipped around and did not stay on the ground the whole time. The National Weather Service rated the tornado EF0. This is the weakest on the Fujita scale. At times the tornado was rain-wrapped. This makes it very difficult to see and can often happen to tornadoes in our area. This happens when the tornado occurs in an area where there is heavy rain and the rain can hide the tornado.
This was not only the first tornado of the year in our area, but also the first in the state in 2009.

Mark Baden
6/9/2009