“But it’s a dry heat”

It crossed 100 degrees a couple times this week in the East Bay. It’s a dry heat. If it’s 100 degrees with no humidity, what temperature do you think that equates to if you had 75% humidity?

About 80 degrees! I know this because I coach Zak’s soccer team, so I learned about the “heat index”. It basically allows you to compare desert heats with NYC-subway-platform-in-August-heat.

This chart is courtesy of NATA

I think I forgot what humidity feels like. This shows that 70 degrees with 90% humidity has a higher heat index than 102 with no humidity.

Finally, if you are in HS it’s two-a-day season. Good luck with that.

P.S.

I was curious so I did a super dirty scatterplot of state heat index vs midpoint rate of each state’s income tax rate range. The R-squared is zero. Nothing to see here.

source for calculating heat index: NOAA and CurrentResults
source for 2019 state income tax rates: Money-Zine
(If interested I can share the details of how I compiled the data. Like I said, it’s dirty, but a more accurate approach in the same vein is unlikely to yield a relationship. I have ideas for other approaches that might, but I’m skeptical there’s any relationship here after seeing this. I thought to do it b/c I’ve heard CA people think higher state taxes were somehow justified by the climate. My gut response from my open-outcry floor days is a double-tomahawk overhand sold!)