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

Question

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?

In: 340

Answer 1

The misters work similar to sweat, the water droplets absorb heat from your body and evaporate. The breeze from the fan increases the rate of evaporation. The misters alone aren’t going to be enough to raise the humidity unless it’s a closed space.

The misters aren’t going to work quite as well when it is already humid out compared to a dry heat, though. But they will still help somewhat because the water might be somewhat cooler, and the fan helps increase evaporation. You would have to be at 100% humidity before the mist stopped evaporating.