When most folks talk about humidity, it is discussed in terms of dew point temperature or relative humidity. While both of those humidity measures can be useful, they sometimes can be difficult to contextualize. For example, on a 90°F air temperature day most folks would say that a 80°F dew point temperature is more understandably worse than a 75% relative humidity (the two values are approximately equivalent). Anyway, an absolute measure of humidity irrespective of temperature is to compute the ratio of mass of water to the mass of everything else in the air. This is typically expressed in units of grams of water per one kilogram of air. The featured chart presents the period of record climatology of daily minimum mixing ratio for Ames. The top panel shows the shaded region between the min and max observed range with the blue line representing a simple average. The red line plots the 2026 values with the bottom panel plotting the difference between the two. You may recall how incredibly dry the air felt toward the end of January (cracked skin and static shocks from everything you touch within the home). The plot nicely shows how close to zero values got and how far below the meager average departures were during this period.

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Tags:   mixingratio