All related- Why does lower temperatures and higher humidy feel so hot? Is overheating when hiking as dangerous or more likely in no humidity or high? How does sweating help cool you down?
In: Biology
You don’t feel hot or cold, you feel the rate at which you are losing heat.
You are constantly sweating, but most of that sweat is immediately evaporating off your skin, and cooling you down by pulling away the “latent heat of vaporization” that is the energy that it takes to evaporate water.
When the relative humidity it high, the air is holding almost all the water it can, so sweat can’t evaporate off your skin as easily, and it builds up on your skin while not taking away any heat.
When the air is cold it can’t hold as much water, so a high relative humidity in cold air doesn’t result in as much sweating because you still lose enough heat through radiation and conduction directly into the air, even though you can’t sweat as easily, you don’t need to.
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