Humidity is at or near its highest levels of the summer in the Baltimore area, but relief is in sight as the weekend approaches.
The dew point reached a stifling 74 degrees by 11 a.m. at both Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and at the Inner Harbor, with temperatures only a few degrees warmer in the lower 80s.
Dew point takes into account both the temperature and the relative humidity and gives a straightforward picture of how hot it feels -- anything above the mid-60s feels sticky, while the mid-70s is pretty oppressive. It is a measure of the temperature at which moisture in the air would condense into dew on grass or fog in the air.
Detailed records of dew points are not kept, as they are with temperature and precipitation. But a daytime 74-degree dew point is not far off from the highest humidity levels recorded in Baltimore.