KANSAS CITY, Mo. — We have had a struggle getting snow this season, but blasts of Arctic air have been plentiful. The Arctic air is very dry and when you bring that air inside via your heating system and warm it up to room temperature without adding moisture, the relative humidity can drop below 10 percent.
The dew point is the temperature to which the air must be cooled to reach 100 percent relative humidity. So, let's take an example of air at 10 degrees with a dew point of 5 degrees, which means the air must cool 5 degrees to reach a relative humidity of 100 percent.
Now, if you warm the air to 70 degrees, and the dew point remains the same at 5 degrees then the temperature must drop 65 degrees to reach 100 percent making the relative humidity 8 percent. So, indoors it can become very dry causing chapped lips, dry skin, easier nose bleeds, scratchy throats and you can get shocked a lot.
The best way to combat the air dryness is to have a humidifier. You can also leave out pots of water and have small decorative electric fountains to increase the moisture content of the air. Chapstick and hand lotion are necessities.
