Desert living ain't for everyone, cigars included. All that dry, arid atmosphere is the last thing that humidity-dependent products produced entirely out of organic leaves need.
The same can be said for those living in areas where winters are extremely cold and dry. Exploding cigars are a genuine risk in these sorts of scenarios. Especially when you fail to properly dry-box your cigars beforehand.
But before you can even get those stogies to the dry-boxing stage, and onward to getting set afire, you have to keep them properly stored somewhere.
This can be incredibly challenging if you live in a very dry climate. This is precisely why we suggest adhering to the following humidor maintenance regimen if you notice that hygrometer reading dipping a bit low.
Step 1: Swap Out Your Solution
Swapping over to Klaro's Winter + Dry Climate Humidor Solution is one of the fastest and most effective ways to offset a drop in humidity. For those living in dry climates this stuff may even need to be utilized year-round, so fill up that Hydro Tray with the strong stuff if those gel crystals are looking a little scarce.
Step 2: Rotation Reduces Frustration
After topping off that Hydro Tray with the stronger solution, reload your cigars in the opposite order from which they were removed from the humidor.
Rotating cigars on a weekly basis is vital to maintaining adequately balanced levels of humidity within a humidor. You should be doing this anyway, so if there's a drop in humidity, and that Hydro tray is still brimming with gooey crystals then a lack of rotation may be your issue.
Step 3: Keep On Rotating
For the better part of the next week, keep moving those cigars around every day. This will allow the humidity within the humidor to evenly permeate each stick, thus negating the risk of undersaturated sticks.
Step 4: Add a Hydro Stick
If your Hydro tray can't take any more solution, and those hygrometer digits are still looking a bit low, it may be time to bring on some outside assistance.
A Hydro Stick is basically a stave of Spanish cedar that is intended to absorb humidor solution and then boost humidity as it releases the vaporized liquid. It may sound gimmicky, but these things really work, especially when you have more than one in your humidor.
Step 5: Reseason Your Humidor
If more than a week has passed, and those readings are still not climbing to an acceptable figure, it might be time to pull out all the stops and do a full reseasoning.
This involves pulling out all of your cigars and applying humidor solution to every wooden surface within the humidor. It may sound extreme, but when combined with every other step listed above is guaranteed to bring humidified equilibrium to that humidor box.
If that doesn't work, then maybe it's time to pack up and move to Panama...