Voices of Cincy: New Orleans Visits Cincinnati (John Gumm)

Jun 25, 2010 by Loki

Welcome to the debut of our new Voices of Cincy series. A collection of guest posts by local bloggers and other members of our community. If you enjoy what they have to say leave a comment or go visit them in their individual lairs on the web, there will always be a bio and links for them at the end of each post. Today we are going to start off with a piece from one of our local weathermen, John Gumm (@Local12JohnWxr on Twitter). And before you ask, no I did not put him up to all the NOLA references, he did that on his own…. -Loki Founder and Curator

New Orleans Visits Cincinnati

John Gumm No, I’m not talking about Loki. He lives in Northside now. Nor am I talking about any of the numerous friends I made during my magical three year stint in New Orleans while working at WWL-TV. Although I do love it when my friends from the Crescent City make it north. Their energy, creativity and love for their city have always been refreshing to me.

The guest I’m talking about is that blasted humidity. It’s an unwelcome guest in my town. Yes, I put up with you when I lived on your turf Mr. Humidity. (HumidCity: what an appropriate name for a New Orleans blog!) You see, I expected you to greet me when I left my home to head into work in the French Quarter. A heat index of 100 at 4:00 AM was not uncommon in the summer as I made the 100 foot trip from my car to inside the WWL-TV weather center. (Heat Index – for the record – is the “virtual temperature” based on a combination of temperature and dew point – for more see below). I remember the smells too (good and bad together)!

Anyway, when I finally arrived in the weather center I was usually covered in sweat despite having only been outside for 30 seconds. But for you to follow me here is a difficult pill to swallow. You could have at least brought me a pot of gumbo. Or even my favorite po’ boy from the Quarter Grocery on Burgundy (dressed please and soaked in hot sauce). But oh no, you come straight out of New Orleans right into Cincinnati without bearing any gifts at all!

That’s OK. I know you won’t be here long when you do visit. And thankfully it’s a rare occurrence. You see, the air we had in Cincinnati earlier in the week came straight from New Orleans. Air with plenty of water vapor included. As they say in NOLA, the water vapor is “lagniappe” or a little something extra. It’s just that I don’t want this lagniappe.

You might be familiar with relative humidity as a way to gauge how sticky it’ll be outside. We give this in percentages: 40%, 50%, 60%, etc. Well, forget about that stat. It’s pretty much useless and outdated. If you want the real scoop on how humid it will be in the summer, look at the dew point temperature. The dew point is an actual measure of the amount of water vapor in the air and has way more to do with how it feels than relative humidity which is always relative to the air temperature.

Here’s a quick primer on dew point temperatures: 65 degrees or above and the air is thick enough to swim in. When you hit 70, you feel like you’re sitting in the middle of the bayou. In Cincinnati last week, we had a dew point of 77 degrees and a heat index of 100! We could have breathed better if we had gills. Again, this air came straight from the mouth of the Mississippi. A huge area of high pressure aloft (think a big bubble of hot air) centered over Oklahoma and Arkansas forced hot, humid air from the bayou into the Ohio Valley. And worse yet, we were sitting on the edge of this hot bubble of air. That’s where you get the storms. Clusters of storms which blast through the area quickly. They have tons of moisture available to them from all that water vapor in the atmosphere and dump very heavy rain.

To put it in perspective, think of a ring of fire at a circus. Inside the ring, there is no fire, but it’s hot. On the edge of the ring you have fire. But in this weather analogy, the fire is the storms. Well, folks, we were in the fire last week with numerous reports of heavy rain, flooding and wind damage.

This pattern looks to repeat itself this weekend, especially late in the weekend as temperatures go up and storm chances increase. In fact, some strong or severe storms are possible on Sunday. But there is some good news. I do see cooler temperatures and lower humidity again as we head into the middle of next week. Until then, prepare for our friend, Mr. Humidity from NOLA to pay us another visit this weekend. I hope he at least brings me some pralines or a Muffaletta. Heck, I’d even take a Lucky Dog. It’s the least he can do.

John Gumm is a native Cincinnatian who has achieved his childhood dream of making a living out of predicting the future. Since his mom wouldn’t let him become a psychic, he settled for becoming a meteorologist and now works on Cincinnati’s top-rated morning newscast “Good Morning Cincinnati” which can be seen weekdays from 5-9 AM on WKRC Local 12. He figures it’s the next best thing to reading palms. John is also the co-founder and CEO of Hurricane Baby, LLC (www.hurricanebaby.com) a mobile software development company based in the Cincinnati area. Read more about John on Local12.com or hit him up on Facebook at www.facebook.com/john.gumm