Summer in Texas = Life in hell

Here in suburban Detroit, we had one of the coolest/wettest springs in about 20 years or so - and temperatures and humidity have been considerably below average - we've only broken into the 80s a few days so far, and it's usually pretty sweltering by mid July. So it's actually been pretty nice so far - clear, dry, mid 70s during the day, dropping into the low 60s/upper 50s at night.

If things get as hot and dry out West as future projections say, perhaps having ready access to one-fifth of the world's fresh-water supply will help make up for the mega-fail of the Big Three...

"If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell."

--Phil Sheridan, 1866

My whole family's in San Antonio, but my wife and I are in Seattle, where during the summer it's sunny everyday and 75. it's the opposite of Texas, you stay for the summers and the winters are the ones that suck...

My air conditioning has been malfunctioning all summer and the manager just fixed it. I'm enjoying a truly cool apartment for the first time in months. Thank God the temps never rose above 80 or so here in North Dakota. Last winter was unusually cold and the snow fall was never ending. When I record the record highs and lows for the day's date for the weather page at the paper, I often note that we have yet to break a high for the date set back in 1901 or even 1899. My uncle, a retired chemist, scoffed when I mentioned global warming last weekend and said the term is a huge joke when chemists get together. He chalks the changing climate up to changes in solar cycles and said that the weather is actually going to be far, far colder in North Dakota than it has been in previous decades. According to Uncle Jim, last winter's winter from hell is the nicest winter I am likely to see in my lifetime because it's only going to get colder and snowier from here on out. I tend to believe the scientist in the family. On the other hand, I prefer cold weather to hot, so I'll be staying put. Forty below keeps the riff raff out is a well-known saying here.

It's 107 here in Phoenix today and it's going to be in the 110+ range this weekend. Hard to say what the heck the weather is doing. We had a record setting (high temp) May with 100+ degree days and then we had a record setting (low temp streak) in June with the most 'under 100' degree days. Now, it seems the heat is setting in.

The one thing I have noticed the most, however, is the Monsoon season has yet to begin. Even though it technically started mid June we've had only one real storm. It's very, very odd.

Actually it's been cooler and monsoon-like in the Maryland mountains. One of the coolest Spring/Early-Summers I've ever seen.

It's been in the 80's here in Anchorage. Pretty hot for us. But lovely weather except for the 70 forest fires in our State and the smoke. The sunrise this morning was eerie....all orangy and shadowy. For me the verdict is still out on global warming, but for us up here it would change things, but not to the point that life would become unbearable. That heat and dry in Dallas sounds more like a Phoenix summer to me....and that really is miserable.

Andrea....40 below keeps the riff raff out is very funny...as a former Fairbanks resident, I can relate.

As the middle child said while leaving our fireworks this year, "Next year we'll need more blankets Daddy." Yes, I'm in Wisconsin.

Wow. It's hot in TX in July! Let's all run for the hills! Water conditions in the aquifer that feeds San Antonio are far better than they were several years ago, so let's be a bit realistic about "epic drought." One thing you can count on is that in 50 years TX will be very hot in July and lots more people will be living there than do now, and no one will be whining about "global warming" because this farce will be long since dead and buried.

When it's 40 below and I'm pushing my car out of a snow bank for the second time in an afternoon, I admit that I always swear I'm going to look for a job in California. Or when my car is being towed for the third time in a month because it refuses to start in cold weater or I can't open my door because the snow drifts are so high or when the door handle is frozen solid and I can't open it ... A really, really cold winter has very few charms. On the other hand, you kind of learn to just get on with it when you live in a climate like this. You don't stay home because the weather is bad. You go to the news conference even if it means having a cop push you out of the snow bank on the way there and again on the way back because that's what you're supposed to do. I think I'd have a harder time just getting on with it if it were 103 or 105 out. That's the kind of weather that makes me droop and whine and want to stay home in front of the air conditioner. I really would move if I lived in a climate like Texas or Arizona.

Here in Tucson, AZ (where that professor is from), the city is actually sinking because of the aquifer. But in our case, the culprit is pretty straightforward: A combination of the various damn on the Colorado, and the unchecked urban expansion of Phoenix, which uses so much of the Colorado River that is known for its *golf courses*.

So we get what little of the Colorado remains, and poor Mexico literally has a dry riverbank.

The climate change debate is just as much about this type of resource usage as carbon emissions and long-term temperature averages.

It doesn't get more mild that where I live - it's called a temperate rainforest. 50s and rain just about year round (except for those pesky 100" of snow each year). Yes, it's hotter this year. We've been setting records - 80, 85. Our glacier is melting away, 2 years until it's out of the lake. :(

Where exactly would I move to if I wanted cooler? Is there a somewhere that is 50 year round without the rain? Sign me up for where ever that is.

I'm just the opposite of Erin. I live in New England, but grew up in California and was educated mainly in the South. I would much, much rather put up with the cold of New England winters than the heat and humidity of Southern summers. I mean, I can always go running in the cold and snow- my cut off is about 0 degrees- but I can't run in 100 degree heat without risking heat exhaustion.

I'm with Mary - you can dress against the cold, and once you become active you don't really feel it. But you can't take off enough clothes for 105 to feel cool!

Up here in Oswego County we're having the wettest, coldest summer in some 30 years. It's rained 8 days out of every 10 since about May. When I've gone running of nights, I've had to wear a sweatshirt over my running clothes about half the time.

Global warming, my a$$.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

There isn't much better place to stay comfortable in the summer than Seattle. Daily average highs in the 70's during July and August. Yes, it can get warmer than that, but I've never seen it much over 95 and that's not a common thing that happens here. Gets in the 90's maybe a few few days a year. A regular hot day here is in the 80's. Come to Seattle, y'all.

I grew up in Northern coastal California where the summers are very comfortable. Now I live in LA where you have to stay inside in the summer except for before 9 am and after 6 pm (though not as bad as Dallas). Most definitely I want to get back to cooler country some day, I like the ability to enjoy being outside whenever I want.

Just remember, when y'all are digging out from snow in December, I'll be opening Christmas prsents in shorts and a t-shirt. I love hot weather and think San Antonio has the perfect climate, but 30 days of 99 to 105 degree heat is even getting to me, and it's not even August, when we usually get the hottest weather. You ought to see the tourists on the Riverwalk - some look about half-dead and the others are wondering why they're paying $250/night for a hotel room in the antechamber of Hell.

My house borders a large canyon area and we're worried about wildfires. Luckily no one decided to do anything stupid like shoot off fireworks for the 4th, but it just takes a cigarette or even a glass bottle. My bird feeders, birdbath are busier than ever and the deer, foxes, skunks, racoons, and everything else are pretty bold for food. If I go out to fill the feeders that are just outside my yard in the greenbelt, I need to be pretty careful because the deer will come right up within about 10 feet.

Rod, its always hard to come back to Texas heat after you've spent a week in Colorado. I'm in Colorado on vacation this week, and I'll be right back there with you in the sweltering heat next week. Better enjoy it while I can: its 65 degrees outside where I am now.

This is the most pleasant summer I can remember, and I've lived in New York City my whole life. June was wet and cool, and July has been pretty amazing. July Fourth was almost fall-like. We have yet to have a true NYC hot and humid day. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, since I can't stand the heat.

I'm in the epicenter of this drought. The main topic of conversation is the water levels in the J-17 well. They havent reached historic levels yet but unless we get a major weather event (like the remnants of a hurricane), they most certainly will. The trees are dying or shedding their limbs. A portion of the Riverwalk had to be blocked off a few days ago because of a tree falling in it and a couple days ago a large limb fell in our city pool. It really is scary and everyone breathed a sigh of relief that the grass fires that started over the weekend were able to be contained.

On a more positive note, because people are so aware of the situation, there is some major conservation going on. The catch phrase is "brown is the new green" referring to our lawns. This is building on the exceptional conservation efforts the city of San Antonio has made in the last few years. The reductions in usage have been at the top of state averages.

My dad lived through the 1950's drought and now I understand why he spoke of that time with a sense of awe. My family feels that now-its history being made but being a many generation Texan, its a familiar history of the weather extremes unique to this area of Texas. Talk about localism...how could we move? This is our home and our roots and we are working to adapt to this latest challenge.

It is no hotter than usual in Dallas in July. Global warming? Bullshit. Get over it. Every place, except maybe coastal California, sucks at some point in the year.

Keep telling yourself that. Think happy, happy thoughts.

Rod, it has been quite cool and wet ever since spring here in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Quite delightful, in fact. I hate the heat---even temperatures in the 80s are a bit too much (my favorite summer was one spent in England).

Winters are somewhat cold and snowy here in New England, but honestly, I don't find it bad at all. You see, I grew up in central New York state (Oswego County, near Syracuse)---there isn't a snowier and cloudier populated area in the United States. Massachusetts winters are a breeze, though summers are a tad less comfortable than summer in Syracuse.

After college spent in unbearable Florida, I'll gladly take it.

Texas? I can't imagine how you can stand it.

Re the anthropogenic global warming claim, I still have not heard anyone explain why the fact that the earth was even warmer than now during the years 1000-1400 was not a tragedy? Anyone, anyone? Beeyueller.....

Summer is nice here in London - can you really complain about a country where anything north of 80F is considered 'scorching'?!?!

Rod, out of curiosity, is Dallas worse in the summer than your native southern Louisiana?

Being English, before I travelled, and lived in Japan (a Deep-South-ish climate), I never fully appreciated how extreme the climate is in most of the world. We tend to talk about a heatwave when the temp is above about 77 F, and a week of snow makes "Arctic conditions". It's all a bit absurd really. Maybe some of the Pacific NW has a similar climate? - Seattle reminded me of Glasgow.

However, I don't know whether it's due to global warming, but the climate seems to be getting a bit more extreme. We had a (relatively) hard winter this year - three months of skiing in Scotland, and even northern England, and it briefly got down to not much above zero F in some places. Now we're having a (relatively) hot summer - the temp was above 86 F for a couple of days the other week. There also seems to be more weird weather - there was snow on high land (not the Alps, just 2,000 feet or so) in June this year, for the first time for a century or so. It's also the first time I've known hot, wet weather - I've always associated heatwaves with droughts, sort of like Spain, but this summer seems more like Japan - daily rainstorms, thunder, etc.

We've had a pretty mild summer here in Pittsburgh; low 80s most days. I'm definitely one of those who prefers a cold winter where I can put on layers rather than a hot summer where you can't really strip down to more than your skivvies.

I will say that when I go to Bangladesh to visit family, I can stand the heat and humidity (and mosquito's) much more easily than even my parents who grew up in that climate!

We had 5+ years of drought here in Tennessee, and I agree that extended drought with extra heat feels *bad*. However, amazingly this year our weather changed and we have had enough rain to make up for the drought as well as more moderate temps. I think it is one of those multi-year el nino/ la nina things... So eventually even Texas weather might turn around. Bad weather doesn't have to be an eternal linear progression.

Let's all move to Hawaii.

While I sympathize with your plight, Rod, I have to wonder about something. A while back (maybe this time last year, not sure) you wrote a piece here that was somewhat negative about the highly mobile culture we have now and how it is damaging the concept of "community". You even faulted a bit your own move from the NE to Texas as an example of it.

Would this hypothetical move due to temperature extremes fall into the same category?

It's odd, Kansas City and Dallas aren't all the far from each other, but here in KC it's been relatively cool and wet. We've only had one week of really warm (alright, hot) weather so far this year.

Cheer up Rod! In six weeks you can be posting about the beautiful weather in Texas. Meanwhile, many of the people writing will be entering fall and (a few weeks later) the first frost. But seriously, the drought in south Texas is severe. Was in Boerne and San Antonio last week. All of the resorts west and northwest of SA are under heavy economic stress. Never seen Tapatio Springs Golf Resort in such bad shape. Fairways almost completely burned out. (Makes you question the economic feasibility of such a venture considering the climate.) At any rate, here is a little known destination point-Beaver Bend, Oklahoma (actually an Oklahoma State Park north of Broken Bow). About an hour+ northeast of the northern suburbs of Dallas. You enter the Quachita Mountains and their forests (sourthern Ozarks). Temperature usually five to ten degrees cooler than Dallas. And undoubtedly, as Greater New Dallas moves north to the Red River, in the next few years will be a second home destination for our metropolitan area.

Another east coast comment:

Cool and wet June. Reports that many crops especially corn are behind.

Jersey shore merchants had a terrible June.

That said the last ten days have been beautiful. Wonderful sunsets. Cool temps at night - 62F. Bright, clear, low humidity days. Highs in the low 80's. If we could bottle this and sell it we'd all be rich.

Hard to believe January thru March was one of the driest on record and the State had begun to plan for drought.

It's great to live without AC.

Southern Ohio avoids extreme temperatures in both Summer and Winter. Rod, I suggest you lead all the Crunchy Cons here to settle. We can take it over the way the Lefties took Vermont. Cincinnati is where the pro life and anti pornography movements started. It's a Catholic city, but there are a few Russian Orthodox congregations and numerous great evangelical churches. I live in Adams County, about an hour east of the city. Here you can buy farmland for $2-3000 per acre. I don't even have to water my garden this year!

Here in Austin, same situation as y'all in Dallas. Except I'm stuck at home with a houseful of kids, whom I can't send outside to play because of the heat and pollution, and there's not many air-conditioned places to take a passel of children for running around and yelling as is their wont. So little legs are unexercised, and tempers are short. Our AC can barely keep the house tolerable. My poor husband has to bike 2 miles to work, but at this point I'd swap him jobs any time.

One plus: we homeschool, so I just make this our "winter" and we slog away at lessons all day, and go out swimming after sundown at the neighborhood pool (heated to more than tepid, but the kids don't care).

How I long for October.

Though (to amend my previous comment) I shouldn't complain: 2 years ago today I was here in Central Texas nine-and-a-half months pregnant. Feeling like a whale that had gotten beached on the Arabian Peninsula.

"I was back in Dallas a couple weeks ago, it was 103 and beautiful. The dry heat is much better than the 80/90 degrees and humid that you get in NYC and DC."

Texas is big enough to have dry heat somewhere, but not in the North East portion of the state where I grew up. I can say from expereince that I would rether being in Phoenix, AZ at 120 degrees than Dallas at 100 degrees. Granted, Dallas doesn't have the humidity of Houston or New Orleans, but it still has too much.

Rod, ya big sissy. I can't believe your ceaseless/senseless whining about the Texas heat.

I like what J. Frank Dobie said:

"Air conditioning ruined Texas. It made it possible for Yankees to live down here." (American Heritage [Dec. 1984], p. 13).

At any rate, I think all this stuff about Texas weather and the direction we're headed with "climate change" is all bogus. It's always been hot down here. Some years hotter than others. There are always droughts. There are always floods.

But the weird thing about Texas isn't the weird weather-- it's the fact that every summer it gets hot, people act like it's never been this hot before. Every time we get a hundred year flood (about every five years) people act like it's never happened before.

Rod, I just think of summer as our winter here in the south. When it's November through April and the weather is awesome, I remind myself that there was and will again be a summer. That's the payment for the glorious mild winter.
I remember it being cold and dark in NYC and lasting forever...

Mr. Dreher:

In hopes of saving my spinach patch, I worked up what I'm now calling a "hot frame" for a portion of my raised bed garden. A few months ago, the kid retrieved the remnants of a fabric wardrobe from a neighbor who was throwing it out anyway. It's basically a light weight, rectangular metal frame with a white fabric exterior and a zipper front. I cut off the zipper side, opened ventilation flaps along the edges, and tipped the thing over the top of the lettuce/spinach bed. I've been doing this for the past week during the 100+ weather. The stuff is still a bit wilted by the end of the day, but so far everything underneath the frame has pulled through reasonably well.

Lynn, that is ingenious.

Back in the Dust Bowl era the scientists understood climate cycles and the common people were subject to superstition. Here's a passage from the 1938 WPA Writers Project guide to Kansas:

"Recent years of almost unprecedented drought have led to the often expressed belief that the climate of Kansas is changing. Geologists and meteorologists, however, point out that weather runs in cycles, the most pronounced being about a third of a century in length. Conditions during a cycle are easily mistaken by laymen for permanent changes. Despite year by year fluctuations in temperature and precipitation, recorded evidence shows that general climatic conditions remain unchanged."

Now it's the other way around. The common people are in touch with reality and the "scientists" are in the grip of a weird superstition.

I live in Austin and I'm currently 5 months pregnant with twins. We don't have Central Air at my house, but I wouldn't use it if I did. Who wants to pay $400 for 1 month of electricity? I play in the kiddie pool with my 22 month old son, use fans and keep a bandana of ice around my neck when it's really needed. 30 years ago that was the norm around here. Quit your complaining and buy some flip-flops. And remember, when your friends from up North are stuck in the house because of all the rain and snow, you'll be outside playing with your kids.

you are right Rod, summers in texas can be brutal. San Antonio has not seen any substantial rain in two years! Our yards are baking and our water supply is dangerously low...we are praying for rain. Nevertheless I would never consider living anywhere else. I have lived in South America, Europe, and although many of these countries were wonderful I would never trade them for Texas. Check out this weeks ECONOMIST MAGAZINE, Texas is on the cover and th featured article states that Texas is the best state in the nation! Texas has more FORTUNE 500 companies than any other state, it has the lowest unemployment rate, it has the most startup companies, after California in the nation, housing is affordable, and quality of life tops all other states. Texas might not be as cosmopolitasn as some would like but the benefits outweigh the problems. Look at poor California, its economy is in shambles, unemployment is the highest in the nation, crime is rampant, and the housing market is in the pits. Texas is only for Texans and the brave and industrious!

Update 2009.
It's not getting any better in Texas. Texas still has the highest insurance rates in the nation, electricity deregulation has failed prompting lawmakers to stop deregulation in some areas of the state. College tuition has doubled again prompting lawmakers to freeze rates in a emergency move. We still rank #1 in children without health insurance, #1 in air pollution, #1 in teen pregnancy, #1 in population without health insurance, and it just gets worse.

The report Texas on the Brink is provided by State Senator Shaphleigh out of El Paso.

I lived in Texas for 3 years, but finally I made up my mind and decided to move back to WA. this place is definetly the worst place to live,I would rather live in Mexico, still dont understand why would someone like to live there.

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