Edit: Thank you all for the detailed answers! You guys are awesome.
In: 2953
Ok, stupid question no 2… If you are in this situation… Can you not just find a body of large water to cool you ?
Obviously assuming there is one.
Must be just me…never heard of “wet bulb” temp…Ive heard of real feel/wind temp…but wet bulb? Nope.
Note that Turnip’s temperatures are in C, not F. The explanation of WB is alps not fully correct. WB is the temperature that a wetted surface will reach from evaporative cooling in a constant breeze. This is the apparent temperature to your skin.
The temperature at which air is fully saturated is the dew point temperature. When air is cooled below the dew point condensation occurs. When the dew point is low then the wet bulb temperature will also be low. If the weather person says the dew point is 55 F, and the forecast low is 50 F you can be assured that there will be dew on the grass in the morning.
There are mathematical relationships that link WB, dew point, and relative humidity. Search up a Psychrometric Chart and you can see curves that allow you to read off all of these values if you know any two of them.
Wet bulb temperature is a better measure of how uncomfortably hot you feel.
The WBT is a measure of how cool sweat can make your skin by evaporating.
I remember they used to do this at work in the summer. If their test ever failed they would take it again in a different spot and call it a pass. Love you corporate America.
I haven’t touched a thermometer in years so I thought this was a weird way of determining humidity by splashing water on a filament bulb and lighting it. Only after reading the comments to make sense of this did I have that “Oh!” moment.
I worked in steam tunnels that had 130°F ambient temps. We use the chart provided by the US Army to determine the length of time that we could stay in the tunnels and also the length of time of required rest with a certain volume of water ingested.
For those who read along and don’t even know what Wet-bulb temperature is:
>The wet-bulb temperature is the lowest temperature that can be reached under current ambient conditions by the evaporation of water only.
>
>Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32 °C (90 °F), equivalent to a heat index of 55 °C (130 °F).
>
>– [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature)
[This guy covers it](https://youtu.be/2horH-IeurA)
He also goes over a fair amount of other stuff in that video but it is featured.
Wet bulb temperature is how temperature feels to a living being. As others have pointed out it has to do with humidity.
For example you are walking in downtown Seattle, it’s raining (100% humidity) and it’s 33 degrees F (just above freezing). You are miserable. People claim the cold “gets in your bones”. All that water is sucking the energy from your body in the form of heat.
Now you’re walking around in Saskatoon or any other bone dry Canadian prairie city and it’s 33 degrees F (AKA 0.5 degrees C). You’re wearing a sweater with a wind breaker and feeling pretty comfortable. It’s because you are well insulated against the cold air as there is very little water floating around stealing your energy. That’s why people say, “oh it’s fine, it’s a dry cold”
Same dry bulbs temps, very different wet bulb temps.
Wind can cause temps to feel different as well. Last January we had a day that was -27 but “felt like” -43. When I hear this I automatically know this means it’s way too cold to be wet out but so windy that it’s gonna hurt
When I lived in Seattle, in winter I pretty much just felt cold all the time regardless of temp
Latest Answers