It’s part of the reason so many of us love living here so much, the beautiful sunny weather. But inject humidity into the picture and the sunny becomes sticky.
That’s when what meteorologists call the “heat index” comes into play.
Some people call it the "real feel" temperature.
But are we really feeling more humid weather in San Diego over the last several years?
Meteorologists at the local National Weather Service office in Rancho Bernardo said yes. "In recent years, it has definitely been more humid than normal," said meteorologist Brandt Maxwell.
But why? "The reason for that is we’ve had much above normal sea surface temperatures along our coast during summer," Maxwell explained.
Higher sea surface temperatures leads to more evaporation and that in turn charges the air with humidity.
But there’s more to it than that.
"We’ve also had a lot of fog recently at night and once that burns off you’ve got some of the mugginess associated with that lingering," Maxwell said.
The summer of 2018, you might recall, was particularly muggy.
"Last year, we set an all-time record ever for anywhere along the southern California coast at Torrey Pines buoy. We had a sea surface temperature of 81 degrees," Maxwell pointed out.
A summer monsoon is moving in this week which will make things even more humid.
But is it a long-term trend?
Maxwell said there’s no way to tell, yet.
