The dew point

On autumn, climate anxiety, and being a dew point obsessive

Walter Price, Hold the umbrella tight while viewing my rain

The perfect fall day is formulaic; that formula has everything to do with the dew point. I’ve lived in Virginia, Boston, and New York City—buttery East Coast humidity and the rhythms of seasonal change have textured my life for as long as I can remember. When I moved to New York a few years ago, I began religiously checking New York Metro Weather and got a dew point crash course. Put simply, it’s the point at which the air becomes fully saturated with water vapor, meaning it can't hold any more moisture, and the water in the air appears as dew. A high dew point means there’s a greater amount of moisture in the air. When air holds less moisture content, or when the dew point is low (say 50° to 60°), a fall day is lent the perfect crispiness. The air takes on that quality that puts things into sharp relief, it feels cleaner, it helps me think, and the world somehow feels more gentle. 

John Homenuk, who runs New York Metro Weather, is described as a “dew point enthusiast.” He measures New York’s weather daily in “vibes” (scored out of 10). Homenuk’s high-score days are always sunny and low on humidity. This October, he hasn’t scored a single day below a 7/10. It’s been an objectively gorgeous fall by all measurements of dew point and the sunscreen I’ve applied daily to my cheeks and nose. Autumn is, in fact, “dew season.” But this year, it has also been characterized by a sudden cold snap and a smattering of 70 and 80-degree days that felt eerily unseasonable. I haven’t been able to shake the sense that I’ve let many of these high-vibes, low-dew-point days go unappreciated. 

Over the past six weeks, I traveled to visit friends and family in Virginia and Minneapolis, hosted a friend here in New York, and threw myself into the fever dream of Climate Week. My chronic illness flared up, work projects have ramped up, I’ve filled my calendar with networking calls, and I’ve said yes to almost every invitation that has come my way. Each year, I get so excited to tune in, mark the arrival of fall, and embrace all of the cliches—I listen to Vashti Bunyan, I bake, I watch Practical Magic, I buy a candle that smells of clove and spruce. But there have been so many threads lost this time, as though dropped in a field of tall grass. 

I get frustrated and restless when I can’t sync up with the rhythms of the season unfolding around me. Things start to feel disharmonious—the pace feels off and my fear of missing out grows fierce. While I love seasonal change, the fear that I’ll let it go by without fully appreciating and embracing it underlies everything. Then there’s the fear that another fall, marked by all of the things I love about it (cool mornings, brilliant red and yellow leaves, fog), isn’t guaranteed. I don’t like feeling as though I’ve squandered anything—time, money, an opportunity—but I especially can’t stand the thought that I’ve squandered this beautiful and fleeting season. 

Climate change is altering the dew point, generally causing it to rise. Hotter temperatures mean the atmosphere holds more moisture. This, in turn, increases humidity, and our summers (as well as the seasons beyond) feel stickier. Traditional fashion seasons and fall dressing, the vibrancy of autumn leaves, pumpkin production, all the most emblematic markers of fall, are threatened by the climate crisis. This season, which is so replete with a kind of romantic melancholy that the falling leaves lend, is also overlaid with a more profound melancholy. We stand to lose so much if we lose the natural rhythms and beauty of seasonal change. There’s an idea called “solastalgia.” The word was coined to name the distress and psychic pain we experience when we lose or see significant changes in the environments that give us solace. There’s also “ecological grief” (or “eco-grief”) and there’s “climate anxiety.” I want a word for the uneasy feeling in your gut when you step outside and the day is unseasonably warm. 

It matters deeply how we talk about the weather. It matters deeply that we pay attention to how it changes. Today, it is autumn, the windows are open, the smell of curry from the Indian restaurant nearby floats in and there is a brilliant yellow tree in my view. It’s warmer than it should be. I reach for the potent metaphors, for the apple ready to be picked. I ask myself questions that hang in the air. What will reach saturation? What will never materialize? I want proof of presence, for the fruits of my labor and my thinking to coat my shoes in the morning as I walk across grass. I want this season to revisit us every year. I don’t want to take any of it for granted.