[Organizers] When to cancel dance?

[Walker Sloan via Organizers]

Deanna,

It is imperative to understand what dew point is and means.  Humidity is 
less important.  Briefly, skin temp is mid 70's.  If the dew point 
exceeds mid 60's, humans get kinna miserable because sweat does not 
evaporate well.  This not only leaves people feeling sweaty and gross, 
it also means they are getting minimal to none evaporative cooling, 
which is our first cooling means.  When dewpoint reaches mid 70's, life 
is really miserable.  That's tropical.

wunderground.com will give you local weather.  You have to customize it 
to get dewpoint.  Dewpoint will be substantially lower in a hall with 
AC.  Besides cooling, AC condenses humidity out of the air, lowering the 
dewpoint.  You could get an instrument to measure dewpoint, or get a 
temp/humidity instrument, and a data sheet on line telling you what 
dewpoint is for a given temp and humidity.

You can see how awful it is for yourself dancing at what kinds of 
dewpoints, and calibrate when you have zero interest in dancing.  My 
guess is that when HALL dewpoint exceeds 65 degrees your attendance will 
fall off.

At our dance in Concord MA, we get 12 cans of lemonade and 40# of ice at 
our higher temp evenings, which are cooler outdoors than GA.  This is 
for 140-180 people.  When outdoors exceeds 90, our committee chair gets 
frozen treats.  We have only fans, no AC.

My own expectation is that 75-78 degrees in the hall should be quite 
survivable.  With AC the dewpoint will probably be in the low 60's.  My 
experience is that dancers are far more concerned about air moving over 
their bodies than about temperature.  Lots of controversy about fans 
blowing in and fans blowing out.  We always have all fans blowing in, 
and a big cupola fan exhausting at the peak of the roof.  Again, without AC.

I once calculated that at Scout House in Concord with 14 window fans 
blowing in and the cupola fan blowing out, we get an air change in the 
hall every two minutes.  BUT with a room full of 100 watt generators 
dancing vigorously, they raise the room temperature 12 degrees over the 
outdoor air blowing into our un-air conditioned space.

At mid 70's with AC I doubt your attendance will fall off much.

Good luck.  If you ever get around to quantifying your temp AND humidity 
or dew point, I'd be _very_ interested.  Particularly when your 
attendance starts falling off due to heat.

I once danced in a hall in Maine that had maybe 6 square feet of window 
space.  I sweated _through_ my leather belt.  But the crowd had a great 
time.

I would not be surprised if southerners all used to strong AC would be 
less tolerant of heat than us northerners without AC in our halls.  :)

Mac Sloan



On 7/21/16 18:47, Deanna Palumbo via Organizers wrote:
> With the current temps in the US at an alarming high, our dance hall has
> been running hot, with their one A/C unit cooling to 75-78 degrees while
> dancing.  We keep it pretty windy, with lots of fans (quietest ones in
> the hall are small Lasko units and louder ones in the back).
>
>
> That being said, at what point do you cancel the dance because of heat?
>  Dancers are already complaining and all we can do is keep it windy.  Of
> course, we could cut our losses if minimum capacity of dancers are not
> coming because of the heat.  In the past & at another hall, we used to
> cancel all of August because of heat, but I don't know how you can make
> that call because you really don't know how it will feel (or how many
> dancers will attend) until you get there.
>
>
> Deanna Palumbo
> /Chattahoochee Country Dancers, Atlanta, GA/
>
>
>
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