'Heat index' a fancy way of saying it's the humidity

Dear Otus,

I was listening to Todd Yakoubian the other day as he was trying to explain the heat index as the "feels like" temperature. All I know is that these days I break out in a sweat just walking to the car. Can you explain it so we dumb laymen can understand?

-- Rosemary Focaccia,

Hot Springs

Dear Rosemary,

It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you, even though you included a silly sweaty emoji with your email. It was either sweat or the little face was crying.

The first clue that we're into the "Arkansauna" season is when you open your car door in the afternoon and it's like opening the oven to check on the cheese grits. Even in the early morning, the humidity makes it feel like the shower room at the gym. Everybody stinks. Here's why.

Following the vernal equinox (which was at 5:28 a.m. March 20 this year), the sun "travels" northward and the daylight hours get longer approaching the summer solstice, when the sun reaches it farthest point north.

The summer solstice (when summer officially arrived) occurred at 11:24 p.m. June 21. This was the longest day of the year when Arkansas got between 14 hours (along the Louisiana border) and 15 hours (along the Missouri border) of daylight. Compare that to the winter solstice, which will be at 10:28 a.m. Dec. 21, when there will be only about nine and a half hours of sunshine.

It gets hotter because the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun. Add to this the annual humidity pods that migrate up from the Gulf of Mexico and you have the makings of a nasty Arkansas summer.

Humidity is the big bugaboo in the "feels like" heat index because it inhibits your sweat from keeping you cool. When it gets too cold, the body shivers. The quivering produces body heat and helps keep you warm. If the body starts to overheat, it sweats. As the sweat evaporates, it cools the skin.

If it is a humid day, sweat does not evaporate as quickly and you feel uncomfortable. Sometimes you get more than uncomfortable -- you get sick.

A fan can help because the air moving over the body helps the sweat to evaporate. Owner has even been known to drive down the road with his head hanging out the window.

Heat exhaustion and heat stroke are nature's ways of telling you that you have overdone it. You simply can't sweat enough to cool off.

A couple of key factors to note: At 90 degrees with 60 percent humidity (not uncommon in Arkansas), you risk heat exhaustion. This rapidly increases to heat stroke at 100 degrees.

If you notice that your face is pale, you have a headache, nausea, your skin is cool and clammy and you are sweating like Bret Bielema in his windbreaker on opening day, you are a prime candidate for heat exhaustion. Your body has run short of water and salt.

Think of it as an automobile that has lost its coolant and has overheated. You have to turn the motor off and cool down. Seek shade or air conditioning and drink lots of fluids (but not adult beverages). If you don't, you could go on to the next step.

In heat stroke the symptoms are similar, but the body's temperature rises to 105 degrees or higher. This can lead to confusion, shock, coma and even death.

You will notice that your beloved family pet has the foresight to slack off in the summer. During the cold winter months your cat can most often be found stretched lazily on the window sill basking in the warm sunshine; in the torrid heat of July and August (and into September) they have the smarts to stretch lazily on the floor under the air conditioner vent.

Humans, however, often lack this common sense. During the interminable summer of 1980 (42 days of 100 degree-plus temperatures; 10 days over 105 degrees) I witnessed neighbors working in their yards on days hot enough to wilt aluminum. They water to mow and mow to water in a vicious cycle of artificial growth and vegicide. Owner, on the other hand, is a staunch believer that if it rains, the grass grows. If it doesn't, the grass dies.

Owner spends each summer studiously turning the yard into a nature preserve that becomes a haven for all manner of wildlife that he delights in watching from the air-conditioned comfort inside the house. For him, the "feels like" temperature is moot.

Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that the hottest temperature ever recorded in Arkansas was a ridiculous 120° in Ozark (Franklin Co.) on Aug. 10, 1936. A that level, it doesn't matter one iota what the heat index is.

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