Why does humidity make temperature feel hot, but restaurants use misters to cool the patrons?

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I live in a town with a lot of humidity in summer. I perspire a lot, but restaurants around here have misters outdoors to “cool things down”. How does that work? How can adding more humidity make the heat more tolerable?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It works by evaporative cooling. Fans, unlike air conditioners, can’t make the air cooler but they can accelerate evaporation because they increase airflow. This can further be enhanced by adding misters, since without them all the fan can evaporate is your own sweat, which means that after it’s gotten rid of most of it you stop feeling a cool breeze. By using misters to spray water on your skin and then evaporate it it the air from the fans always feels like a cool breeze.

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