Why is a hot bath or shower so comfortable and warm but weather at the same temperature would be (almost literally) hell?
In: Biology
You don’t have to breathe in hot bath or shower water. The air is still decent.
But take a hot shower with the fan off and the room sealed up, the weather will get pretty bad in there.
Conversely, if you stand outside in 95F degree heat, but wear a rebreather with a hose going inside to 65F degree AC, or just stick your face inside, you feel pretty good!
TL:DR – a lot of the misery from heat comes from breathing it.
Time spent. The air is also usually cooler than the water. Try a sauna to compare air temp with water temp
My guess is that a part of your body is still exposed and is able to cool off, often in cool surrounding air. You are also usually completely stationary in the bath/shower and don’t do activities that generate heat. Oh, you also usually (I hope) wear clothes when you are in the air which make you retain heat. Trying going outside naked in 35 C weather. It’s not too bad as long as there’s no sun.
You feel hot when there is a temperature difference between your skin and the environment.
Your body has a way to refresh: sweating. The body stores the heat in some water and then evacuates it. Then, the sweat evaporates, leading to a temperature difference between air and skin.
But when you are in a hot bath, the sweat does not evaporate and then your skin does not cool down. So you don’t feel the difference of temperature as much.
A part of it is psychological, because you can exit the warm shower any time you want. Whereas if you are outside digging a trench in 95F summer heat to pay the bills you don’t have a choice. On the other hand, remember the times you were warm outside and enjoyed it? Going to the beach, the park, etc. Psychology has a huge factor in this.
Stranded in a hot desert? Torture!
Lying on a hot beach? Heaven.
But to be clear: psychology doesn’t account for all of it, but it is definitely part of it.
The most uncomfortable part of hot weather is the way sweat makes your clothes drag on your skin and hamper your movement.
Because you are naked in the tub, the sweat you’re producing isn’t interacting with clothing.
Your body produces heat which it has to remove to stay within a small range of acceptable body temperature.
Removing heat to air is pretty slow, while water absorbs your body heat much faster. Hence 20 degree (C) air is ok, while 20 degree water feels really cold, and running around drunk in 0 degree weather for a few minute is fine, while 0 degree water will kill you in that time.
Water is thermally neutral at something like 35 degrees C. A few degrees below and you’ll lose heat and it will feel cold, a bit above, and it will quickly become unbearable and even dangerous.
You ever sit in a scalding hot bath for an extended period of time? Quickly becomes equally as uncomfortable.
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