This is part of our series “Extreme Living: Climate Disruption Stories,” where we share stories from Moms members about family life in an age of extremes. Read stories about wildfire smoke here, extreme heat here, and flooding here.
I am a long-distance runner. I started running marathons 18 years ago, and 20 months before my daughter was born, I ran my first ultramarathon—a 50-mile race along the Potomac River in Great Falls National Park.
I had high hopes for getting back into shape after the birth of my daughter in 2015. I also craved the companionship of mom friends who were as motivated as I was to be outside, running with strollers, running through the woods (not with strollers), setting and achieving goals unrelated to our children. So I found a mommy running group, my tribe.
This month is the ninth anniversary of my first run with that group. A lot has changed over the years—kids have been born, teens have gone to college, families have moved, most of us have suffered and healed from injuries, several of us have hit menopause.
One thing that hasn’t changed: our anxiety about running in climate-fueled heat and humidity in the DC suburbs, where we live. It feels like it gets worse every year, with these last three or four summers being especially swampy. We try to time our runs to avoid the worst of the humidity (which falls in those early morning hours that runners otherwise love—5 AM, 6 AM) but beat the midmorning heat. It’s an endless puzzle.
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Ultimately, humidity is getting worse because of climate change. And heat combined with air moisture is one of the potentially deadliest consequences of the climate crisis. According to one study, leaving humidity out of the equation has led us to underestimate the impact of climate change—by half!
If you’re in the Eastern U.S., you feel me. Here are stories from Moms’ members working to protect their families, their hobbies, and their homes from extreme humidity.
Ali Simpson, New York
“Where my family and I live in upstate New York, the humidity has become unbearable for weeks at a time. We made the decision to keep our three-month-old and three-year-old indoors on especially humid days, which means missing out on our favorite summer activities like hiking and going to the farmers’ market.”
Sam Schmitz, Illinois
“Chicago is known for its frigid winters, lake effect snow, and treacherous blizzards, but throughout my childhood, we also experienced heat and suffocating humidity in the summer. These days, heat indexes often surpass 100 degrees due to high humidity, and the temperatures on turf fields climb substantially higher. When we were teenagers in the 2010s, my brother would go to football practice almost every day while I’d go to soccer training, sometimes twice a day. My parents would always worry about us because we’d told them horror stories of our teammates getting heat stroke or vomiting from dehydration. They particularly worried about my breathing on high humidity days because the thick air would trigger my asthma.
“While my brother and I were lucky to avoid some of the most dire consequences of extreme heat and humidity, we unfortunately got used to walking around with gallon water bottles and coming home drenched in sweat on the verge of collapse. Summers should be a time for kids to carelessly enjoy running around, playing sports, and exploring the outdoors, but increasing extreme weather from climate change is certainly cause for concern for kids’ safety and parents’ peace of mind.”
Liz Hurtado, Maryland
“Every summer my kids anticipate the start of the 10-week swim and dive season. What they didn’t anticipate this year was that the alarmingly high temperatures and humidity would lead to shorter and even canceled practices. It also tragically resulted in them witnessing their coach suffer from heatstroke. All summer long, I had reminded my kids of the precautions they needed to take to prevent heat illness, but nothing could have prepared them for this. They feared that if extreme heat could do this to an adult, what could it do to kids?”
Alexandra Zissu, New York
“The humidity outdoors where I live is horrific. But what about indoors? About a decade ago, my family moved out of New York City, my hometown, to the rural woods two hours north for a more nature-filled childhood. Everyday since has been an experience. I am embarrassed to admit that during our first summer here, I spilled a glass of water on a wool rug, was too busy to blot it up, and it … grew a mushroom!
“That weird ’shroom was a crash course on humidity and maintaining safe moisture levels inside our home so the indoor air was safe to breathe. I have been using my hard-won humidity knowledge every summer since as each year has been progressively more humid—and hot. I know this because I feel it, but also because we now monitor the humidity in the house. I was one of those anti-air conditioning people, but now I have to relent sometimes. And you should see how much water the basement dehumidifiers pull from the air on the soupy-feeling days. It’s wild.”
Isabel González Whitaker, Tennessee
“My 11-year-old son loves to play basketball outside but has a tendency to overheat and also has sensitivity to poor air quality. That means we have to significantly reduce his outdoor play in the summer in Memphis, where we’ve experienced heat indexes as high as 109-degrees thanks to the dangerous combo of high temps and high humidity. Memphis has some of the worst air quality in Tennessee, and the humidity causes it to sit lower in the atmosphere and stagnate, exposing kids like my son to harmful chemicals, pollutants, smog, and more. His eyes get super itchy and swollen, he develops a persistent cough on those days, and if he doesn’t take in enough fluids, he inevitably pukes.”
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The intense summer humidity has definitely changed my running habits, as it’s changed the habits of many families featured above and even the way school sports are coached. Over the last couple of years, I’ve wound down my July and August running. I no longer try to coax my daughter out on summer runs with me. And I’m preparing for a triathlon—because the pool is a perfect reprieve on any hot, humid day.
Learn more about Moms’ work on extreme weather.
Tell Congress: Commit to Climate Investments and Clean Air Progress