Firstly let me apologise if this is not the right group in which to ask this
question.

I am based between Liverool and Manchester and I am about to embark on a
'pet' project which will require the local relative humidity to be below
about 60% and ideally below 50%. Keen to check the r/h, I bought an
inexpensive (or cheap!) digital hygrometer from Maplin:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ywsspy

The spec claims a 'display' accuracy of +-3%. That would probably be good
enough, but I thought that I'd run a check against the nearest weather
station which appears to be about 20 miles away from me

Comparison with r/h measurements from there might put the claimed accuracy
of my hygrometer in some doubt. For example, the weather station was
reporting an r/h of 75% at the same time that my hygrometer was reading 58%.


If I thought that the distance wasn't an issue, I'd happily monitor the
weather station and use that as a guide. However, since I've been monitoring
it, the r/h value has never been lower than 60%, even on cold, dry days so
I'm left wondering wether it will ever drop.

Hence my questions:
1/ Is this r/h ever likely to improve (i.e, go below 60%)
2/ Does anyone know if the distance of 20% is a likely contributor to the
differences I'm seeing between the weather and my own measurements?
3/ Does anyone know what kind of r/h range we typically see in the n/w uk
across the year?
4/ Does anyone know if there are any online archives of uk r/h to give me a
feel for what time of the year the lowest r/h is likely to be? I've checked
the Met office and can't see any there.

Regards and TIA,
MikeB