Yeah, but its a dry heat.
Everyone has heard this phrase in saying how 110 degrees in the scorching sunbelt city of Phoenix is not really as hot as 95 degrees in the humidity of Indiana, Florida or Virginia, the three states in which Ive spent most of my life.
In Phoenix this summer for a Mennonite convention, I was introduced to how hotel entrances and sidewalk cafes at restaurants/bars actually manufacture humidity by misters gently pouring out blessed and cooling moisture over the heads of hotel guests, passersby and those brave enough to sit outdoors. But even our small town has misters in some of its outdoor dining establishments, I learned upon my return. (Yeah, I dont get out much to those kinds of places.)
But this summer something else hit me besides the dry oven I stepped into upon arriving in Phoenix, Ariz., on June 30. You might recall that was pretty much in the middle of 15 to 20 days of record-busting temperatures throughout the southwest and other places. Dry heat means dry deserts and brown, non-existent yards or yards/lots filled with stones. Dry heat means forever stretches of highway where all you see is more brown, or at best, the light green of various cacti, like Arizonas hallmark saguaros. (Ill shoot myself the rest of the summer for not getting any pictures of Arizonas saguaros. We planned to travel through much more desert and surely there would be more saguaros in the Mojave desert, for instance. But the only place we saw them was Arizona.)
So if you like green hills, meadows, pastures and tree-filled mountains, that doesnt happen much in the southwest. Certainly there are delightful exceptions: Sonoma, Ariz.; Albuquerque, N.M.; Zion Park, Utah, where rich greens accent the deep reds and browns and tans (and many other hills and valleys in various places, Im sure). And of course there are flowers tooeverywhereif you look for them and appreciate them. I would love to see the saguaro blooming in spring. There is awesome beauty in the southwest that I enjoyed immensely, but there is also a lot of plain brown (and somewhat boring) landscape. On the other hand, miles and miles of nothing but deep green forest along Interstate 64 between Charlottesville and Richmond, Va., is pretty boring too.
But if you like green climates, that takes moisture, and moisture means humidity. If you are going, you just realized this? Ill try to wiggle out of that by saying experience is the best teacher and yes of course I knew this in theory but not in lived experience, at least not as an adult. I had been through desert places previously when twelve years old but then I was thinking more about the cute boys I was seeing and cool rides awaiting us at Disneyland, for instance.
All the carping and crying about humidity in the east, Midwest, or southeast is like wanting to experience the joys and happiness of parenting without sleepless nights and toddler tantrums (to fall back on two old clichés). Its like wanting to enjoy the fun of jumping waves in the ocean without getting your hair messed up. Moisture and humidity help bring rain which makes for a greener landscape. Thats just the way it works, they tell me. Its science.
I like this simple explanation from a childrens website from NASA as a reminder of this cycle: Clouds form from water or ice that has evaporated from earths surface, or from plants that give off water and oxygen as a product of photosynthesis. When it evaporatesrises from Earths surface into the atmospherewater is in the form of a gas, water vapor. Water vapor turns into clouds when it cools and condenses [and] turns back into liquid water or ice (http://scijinks.nasa.gov/rain).
Ergo, humidity helps it rain. Dry heat does not.
I promise to try and grow up and quit complaining about high humidity days. I guess Ill take the humidity and greenness and say when someone complains about the humidity, Yes, but its a GREEN humidity.
Next week in my blog and column Ill write more about water scarcity, from our visit to Hoover Dam while in the southwest. That ingenious installation in the 30s still brings water, moisture and life to that area as one of the U.S.s largest hydropower facilities.
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Another Way is a column from MennoMedia by Melodie Davis. She is the author of nine books, most recently Whatever Happened to Dinner and has written Another Way since 1987. She also keeps a blog at www.FindingHarmonyBlog.com.
