What does “dry heat” in arizona feel like? ?

I had been walking in the hot Arizona dry heat most the afternoon that day and had to pee on my powdering feet because..I was hallucinating.

As someone who has lived there, it means there is little or no humidity. It can feel hot, though. This type of heat is much more bearable to me than being in Florida in the summer (Yes, I also lived there).

You'd sweat in 80° Arizona heat too. The difference is that your sweat would evaporate much more efficiently, cooling your body overall. The low humidity makes sweat more efficient, so the benefit to a dry heat is that the same temperature doesn't feel as oppressive as it does in a more humid region. Low humidity generally makes for a wider range of bearable temperatures, at least in my opinion. But I also grew up on the leeward side of the Rockies, so I'm used to semi-arid climates with broad temperature ranges.

The sun makes my eyes hurt. I don't call it "Arizona" I call it "The Arid Zone".

 If you can keep drinking water then it dont feel much

 (I have working all day in an environmental chamber @ 120degrees BUT less than 5% humidity and didnt really notice it (as soon as you sweat it evaporates so you dont notice it - THATS why its extremely important you keep drinking water (And if necessary - salt tablets)

But 80degrees and 95% is unbearable

80 can actually feel cool if there's a breeze!

I grew up in southern Arizona and lived there until my late twenties. Dry heat--heat with low humidity--feels hotter than the same temperature with normal humidity. (That temperature with high humidity is quite uncomfortable. Welcome to Atlanta.)

You sweat freely, but in the dry air, your sweat dries more quickly. You never get two wearings out of your clothes except pants; everything else has dried sweat on it. Dark and rich colors fade if you spend time outside, even on days it's not hot. You need to wash your hair pretty much every day unless you hide from the heat eight months a year. But you walk to campus, or to your car in the parking lot at work, you arrive sweaty. (And scald your hand on the car door handle, too.)

Most days in the southern half of the state it's 100% sunshine, with no more than scattered clouds, so the radiant heat of the sun on your skin and clothes is felt every time you step outside. You can easily break a sweat walking fifty feet to the mailbox.

The dry air causes other discomforts, like dry chapped lips, dry skin (the worst hangnails of my life--there wasn't enough lotion in the world), and the inside of your nose getting so dry it cracks. I had a lot of nosebleeds when I lived there.

You do get acclimatized to some degree, so you can tolerate the heat. It always amused the tourists to see us locals bundled up on a day in the fifties while they sat in the sunshine in their shorts and T-shirts.

Wintry days are great, though, temps in the sixties and low seventies, bright sunshine.

Dry heat, meaning atm heat where there is little humidity in the air, feels like you've put your body inside an oven.  The air you breathe is hot, the things you touch are hot, and the Sun beating down is even hotter.  But you don't sweat because whatever perspiration you produce immediately evaporates into the air.  So your skin remains dry even when the temperature soars above 100 F, which it does frequently in AZ during the summer.

And that's way different from NJ or virtually anywhere east of the Mississippi River.  At 80 F in NJ your perspiration stays on the skin because the surrounding air is humid and saturated with moisture.  And that's actually a good thing because when the breezes blow across you that causes the perspiration to evaporate and carry off the heat that your body has.  You don't have that in AZ during a heat wave; so the risk of heat stroke is higher even at lower temperatures because it's dry heat.

80 isn't hot in the dry low humidity of the southwest, until the monsoon season hits with the muggy humidity of the thunder storms.

You know that feeling you get when you look into a hot oven - kind of like that when you walk out of a casino in Vegas into 110+ heat. 

When I was visiting Idaho once I was playing basketball outside in 90F and almost no humidity. Your body stays cool because the sweat dries so fast - after playing awhile you look down and have salt rings all over your t-shirt - no dripping and didn't even realize you had been sweating. (I live in the mid-atlantic so know what you are talking about- 72 and very high humidity can be miserable if you are trying to do something strenuous).