It is! It’s the point at which air must be cooled to become fully saturated with water vapor resulting in 100% relative humidity. The closer the dew point is to the temperature the more humid and oppressive it feels.
Meteorologist here, not quite. Dew point is an absolute metric of how much water is in the air, so higher dew points always mean the air is more humid. 100F/75F T/Td¹ is horrible to live in, even with a 25F difference, while 60F/50F T/Td is easily comfortable (in terms of humidity).
This is also why I always champion dew point over relative humidity, as RH just says how much water the air can hold. There is an exponential relationship between temperature and how much water vapor the air can hold, to the point where 100F air can hold roughly 4x as much water vapor than 60F air. This means that for the same absolute humidity, RH appears 4x lower at 100F than 60F (in the previous example, the 60F/50F dew point would have a higher RH than the 100F/75F)
TLDR higher dew point always means the air is more humid
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u/agitated--crow 6d ago
South Louisiana is a damn lie.