For example, I spend time in Little Rock and San Clemente. LR is always far more humid, to the point it’s not even relatable. But SC seems to generally have a higher relative humidity. Right now it is 84% in SC and 54% in LR. Is this because the air in SC somehow cannot hold as much humidity as the air in LR?
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Relative humidity has always been a terrible way to describe how much moisture is in the air. The capacity to hold moisture increases exponentially as temperature rises. This means there can be days where the amount of moisture is completely unchanged, but the relative humidity will go from 100% at dawn to 30% by peak daytime heating.
For all practical purposes, absolute humidity is the value people should use. But absolute humidity is a measure that is never available. Therefore we need to use absolute humidity’s non-linear cousin – dewpoint. If you are a human being – dewpoint is always the value you should use to describe how humid it is. A dewpoint of 75F is always really humid, and a dewpoint of 30F is always really dry, regardless of temperature.
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