I feel kind of annoying for asking another heat mat question (even though I know these forums are meant for questions haha), but for some reason something's not sitting right with me about the temperatures on my BP's heat mat.
As I've stated in my previous threads, I measure the surface temps in my snake's tub almost everyday and I have 2 digital thermometers on both sides of the tub to measure the air temps. I've read on numerous other threads that since our internal body temperature is 98.6F, anything we touch that feels warm to us would be way too warm to the touch for a snake.
With this in mind, I'm confused about my heat mat because whenever I measure its surface temp the temp gun reads between 85-90 degrees throughout the mat (the center of the mat is closer to 90 and the edges are closer to 85), but if I put my hand on the surface of the hot spot I can feel its warmth.
In theory, if something is colder than 98.6 degrees then I shouldn't be able to feel warmth when I touch it...so why is my snake's hot spot warm to the touch?
Maybe I'm lacking some basic understanding/knowledge here lol, or maybe my temp gun isn't giving accurate temperature readings? (I bought it from Home Depot for $25 and I've heard that many people use cheaper ones with no problems, so I wouldn't assume it's faulty).
However, there was one time that I found him inside his hide on the hot spot and when I checked the surface temps the temp gun read 80 degrees at the hottest point....so I kind of freaked out and turned up my thermostat 5 degrees higher, and ~20 minutes later I checked his hot spot surface temperature again and this time it read 98-99 degrees! Which I know is WAY too hot so I immediately lowered the thermostat back to what it was originally set to (and the surface temps measured 89-90 once I changed the thermostat temp back).
By the way, my thermostat is set at 90 degrees to get my desired temps (85-90), and then I adjusted it to 95 degrees which caused that huge temp spike.
So I'm just really confused about why I keep getting such mixed readings from my temp gun and why I can feel the heat pad's warmth with my hand if it's measuring at 90 degrees max. It also doesn't seem right that the hot spot could've jumped from 80 to 98 degrees after I adjusted the thermostat by only 5 degrees...

Sorry if my explanation was a bit confusing, I don't really know how else to word it without making it even longer.
Side question: how hot is hot enough to burn a snake? The thermostat I use is Herpstat 2 which is very reliable, but the sudden jump from 80 to 98 degrees on the hot spot in the incident I described above made me a little worried.