I thought I had a handle on humanity, I mean, humidity. You know, the more humid the conditions, the more water vapor in the air – which means it is harder to sweat, or more specifically it is harder to get rid of the salty wateriness that forms to cool us down.

Up until recently, my experience of high humidity, you know, anything over 55% had always followed a respite. After all when the humidity approaches 100%, there is a good chance we will get some rain.

In Doha, not so much.  As I head towards summer, not only is the temperature rising, but so is the average humidity and we are getting no liquid respite. So what does this mean in real terms? It means it is always above 30degC and often close to 40degC day or night, cloudy or no.

We still have that golden moment, just before sunrise, when the day is at its coolest but even this is now rarely in the high twenties.

As a runner, someone who relies quite happily on an ability to sweat freely, the levels of humidity are a bit of a bug bear. My running and walking gear in is regularly sweat soaked, on a daily basis, whether it’s a 4 mile gently jog, of an easy stroll along the 2.5 mile route I take between work and my hotel. So  I have reinterpreted the ”humidity (slash) feels like”  scale to a more colloquial scale.

Thanks to Wikipedia, and the Canadians, I get to geek out about the Humidex and Dew Point*, but I will keep that tangent internal.

For the purposes of this table, we will assume the temperature is always 35degC

*Dew Point: temperature of water vapor in the air

Humidex: The Humidity Index

When the Dew Point is close to the air temperature, there is a high humidity.