Another heat mat question

[Lord Sorril]

...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).

...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.

So, I had the same question 'Why does the heat mat feel warm to my hand?'. The short answer is: Your core temperature is much different than your skin temperature. Your skin temperature is reliant upon a variety of factors including the temperature of your muscles, the ambient value of your environment, and the distance measured away from your core. For example: The skin on your hands and feet are almost always colder than your forehead.

My heat mats will also read a variety of values if directly measured. I try to place my thermostat probe in the center of the heat mat, and then check the values inside the enclosure instead of trying to bother with measuring the heating element itself.

I couldn't tell you how high the temperature needs to be to burn a snake: I haven't done it. Long before you reach a physical burn you can inflict nerve damage. If we are talking ball pythons: I can tell you from experience that they show signs of stress above 88F. I calibrate my thermostats so that my hot spots do not exceed 90F as a maximum. A hot spot it nice to have for digestion, but, is not needed if the ambient temperature is high enough.