In which humidity means condensation but not precipitation
I arrived in Minneapolis late on Sunday night to find that Frontier had lost my luggage. Between reporting the loss and waiting on the car rental, I managed to leave the airport by 12:30 am, about an hour later than I intended to leave.
Things have been hot and dry here in the upper midwest. The radio yesterday said that the soybean and corn crops were in crisis; only 56% of the crops are considered "good" or "excellent". I've also noticed an uncharacteristic lack of mosquitoes, considered by some the Minnesota state bird. So it's dry. Not that the humidity is absent - there's still plenty of that. It's just that the H2O molecules don't seem to be in a precipitating mood.
Yet, condensation happens.
Having left humidity behind in Kansas eleven years ago, I have little tolerance for it now. You know when you get off the plane what you're in for - the weather inside the jetway is only a little less extreme than that on the tarmac. The jetway in Denver had been like a large oven, hot, dry, and stifling; getting off the plane in Minneapolis was a little like walking into a sauna (and for me almost as claustrophobia-inducing). Needless to say, I cranked the AC in the rental car as soon as I got in on Sunday night.
I was headed to Rochester from Minneapolis. My hotel is in Rochester (the home of the Mayo Clinic), while the station is 30 miles south-west in Austin. Minnesota is largely rural - farmland, lakes, rivers, forests. The highway between Minneapolis and Rochester is a four-lane, although not an interstate. Very rural. Other than a few truck stops and farmhouses, it's very empty and dark. And humid in the wee hours of a July night. Humid enough that visibility was getting poor - not because of atmospheric fog, but because the windshield was fogging. I put on the defroster thinking that would help, but it got worse. With visibility steadily decreasing to the dangerous state in the dark, dark Minnesota countryside, I finally ran the wipers and it occurred to me - the cold air inside the car was causing condensation on the outside of the car's windshield.
That's a lot of humidity. Still no rain.
Things have been hot and dry here in the upper midwest. The radio yesterday said that the soybean and corn crops were in crisis; only 56% of the crops are considered "good" or "excellent". I've also noticed an uncharacteristic lack of mosquitoes, considered by some the Minnesota state bird. So it's dry. Not that the humidity is absent - there's still plenty of that. It's just that the H2O molecules don't seem to be in a precipitating mood.
Yet, condensation happens.
Having left humidity behind in Kansas eleven years ago, I have little tolerance for it now. You know when you get off the plane what you're in for - the weather inside the jetway is only a little less extreme than that on the tarmac. The jetway in Denver had been like a large oven, hot, dry, and stifling; getting off the plane in Minneapolis was a little like walking into a sauna (and for me almost as claustrophobia-inducing). Needless to say, I cranked the AC in the rental car as soon as I got in on Sunday night.
I was headed to Rochester from Minneapolis. My hotel is in Rochester (the home of the Mayo Clinic), while the station is 30 miles south-west in Austin. Minnesota is largely rural - farmland, lakes, rivers, forests. The highway between Minneapolis and Rochester is a four-lane, although not an interstate. Very rural. Other than a few truck stops and farmhouses, it's very empty and dark. And humid in the wee hours of a July night. Humid enough that visibility was getting poor - not because of atmospheric fog, but because the windshield was fogging. I put on the defroster thinking that would help, but it got worse. With visibility steadily decreasing to the dangerous state in the dark, dark Minnesota countryside, I finally ran the wipers and it occurred to me - the cold air inside the car was causing condensation on the outside of the car's windshield.
That's a lot of humidity. Still no rain.
posted by Melanie Unruh-Bays at
2:08 PM
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