Weather (heat, humidity, bugs, seasons) - can you give me the scoop? (Dallas: house)

[jfbd6805]

We are considering a move to the DFW area and are looking at the towns of Mckinney, Plano and Frisco primarily b/c of school district (we have a 10 month old and plan to stay for a long time if we can) and affordability (max $250K for 4bd/2bth house). We are also considering Tulsa, OK and Denver, CO - I know these are quite diverse choices but there it is : )

So, can anyone give me a sense of what seasons are like in the DFW area? What is fall like (cool crisp mornings, etc?)? How long is each season (i.e. is winter Nov - March or shorter?) Do you get snow? What is the humidity like? Is it still pleasant to be outside during summer months or only in the mornings/late evenings? I looked at weather.com at the averages but I find it is always more helpful to get input from real people as opposed to a graph.

We enjoy outdoors activities (fishing, canoeing, walking and biking) hence my curiousity about the weather.

Oops forgot to mention I am also curious about bugs/pests - are there a lot of them? Are they easily taken care of my local pest control? Any I should be worried about since i have an infant?

Thanks in advance!

[CallMeLaura]

Where are you moving from?

I remember meeting my boyfriend at the airport a few years back, and was sitting on the hood of my car because it was such a nice night out. The first words out of his mouth were 'It's so hot.'

In my opinion, it starts getting chilly late November and warms back up in March. However, there are many days when a t-shirt is adequate and people still wear shorts during the day. There will probably be 1 or 2 days when it precipitates near the freezing mark. Usually not snow, but sleet or freezing rain, or rain that freezes overnight. Everything stops for the day and it's gone the next.

Spring and fall are nice, although showers pop up a lot, generally around evening rush hour. Can make planning outdoor activities difficult, but you'll find a lot of great weekends you can go do stuff.

It's hit 100 in June through September, but usually not unbearable all four months. At the hottest, the lows are in the 80s, and most people don't go out. It's still possible, just want to drink a lot of water. And not every day is like that.

The humidity varies. When it rains, it can become oppressive, but it's not constant like coastal towns. I found Milwaukee's 80 degrees to be unbearable, while it's very comfortable to me in Dallas.

As for Tulsa, it's a great place to grow up and retire, but hard to live there in between. If you have a bead on good jobs (or don't need jobs), then it might not be a bad idea. A bit cooler there than Texas, but taxes will be higher. Great public libraries. Small town atmosphere, but big enough to have retail and services. You'd love the river walks.

Haven't really been in McKinney long enough to say if it has the same feel Tulsa does, but it does seem a bit more 'small town' than Dallas. And right next to Dallas, so anything you need is just a few miles away.

Can't speak for Denver, although I've heard it's more expensive than either DFW or Tulsa.

[jobezee1]

Originally Posted by jfbd6805

We are considering a move to the DFW area and are looking at the towns of Mckinney, Plano and Frisco primarily b/c of school district (we have a 10 month old and plan to stay for a long time if we can) and affordability (max $250K for 4bd/2bth house). We are also considering Tulsa, OK and Denver, CO - I know these are quite diverse choices but there it is : )

So, can anyone give me a sense of what seasons are like in the DFW area? What is fall like (cool crisp mornings, etc?)? How long is each season (i.e. is winter Nov - March or shorter?) Do you get snow? What is the humidity like? Is it still pleasant to be outside during summer months or only in the mornings/late evenings? I looked at weather.com at the averages but I find it is always more helpful to get input from real people as opposed to a graph.

We enjoy outdoors activities (fishing, canoeing, walking and biking) hence my curiousity about the weather.

Oops forgot to mention I am also curious about bugs/pests - are there a lot of them? Are they easily taken care of my local pest control? Any I should be worried about since i have an infant?

Thanks in advance!

Well, I'll try to give it to you in layman's terms, the Reader's Digest version. Summers, like now, are oppressive. Long heat waves and high humidity. It really doesn't start heating up until mid-July to say, mid-Sept. 30 or 40 100+ degree days are not uncommon. It hasn't been like that this year. Lots of rain in May and June kept temps down but humidity very high. That, however, is an anomoly. Normally, summer is pretty dry. Summers evenings and mornings can be uncomfortably muggy. Sometimes, temps don't go below 80 with high humidity.

Autumn and spring are delightful but usually brief. These are the best times of year. Late Sept. to around mid-Nov. and mid March to sometime in June. Some years get hotter earlier than others. April and May are usually the wettest months.

If your coming from up north, winter will be a pleasant surprise. Some, but not many nights in the 20s, but mostly 30s and highs in the 50s. We do on occasion have an ice storm but not to worry as the entire city tends to shut down when one of these occurs. Overall, winter is fairly dry.

As for bugs, they are TERRIBLE this year because of all the rain. The skeeters are eating people alive this year, but again, this year has been usually wet after a prolonged drought. Because we are drought-prone, there were severe water restrictions in many municipalities for over a year and I suspect these will continue as the area has some serious future water concerns. Many peoples St. Augustine grass died out last year.

Pest control is your best bet with bugs but since you have an infant, you need to be careful about black widow and brown recluse spiders. Their bites can be ugly, but usually not fatal.

If you like the outdoors, we have lots of lakes and they are full again because of all the rain. Very crowded in the summer though. Spring and fall less so. There's the Piney Woods in East Texas, very scenic and historical area too, if that interests you.

All of the above is in reference to North Texas and DFW. Not sure where you're going. More humid the further south you go, and winter in the Panhandle is more brutal. But summer is hot, hot, hot everywhere. Drier out west. Hopes this helps even if it's not exactly the Reader's Digest version. Come on down, y'all will love it here. North Texans, did I describe it fairly well?

[jobezee1]

Just to concur with Laura's post, yes there are winter days when a t-shirt will suffice with highs in the upper 60s or around 70. All I can say is this, we have a saying here that is as old as Texas itself. All ya'll know what I'm talking about.

"If you don't like the weather in Texas, just wait a minute."

In winter, a "blue norther' " can come it and drop the temperature 50 degrees literally in a matter of hours.

In spring, it can be 65 one day and 100 three days later. Now these wild fluctuations don't happen constantly, but they have been know to occur several times a year, especially in winter.

Bring lots of different clothes. There will be winter mornings when a coat is necessary and by afternoon, you've shed the layers and are now in a t-shirt.

[KantLockeMeIn]

We got used to the heat very quickly. Since it's drier than where we came from in the mid atlantic, it's not as unbearable. We've actually walked outside on 95 degree days commenting on how beautiful it was outside. Factor in a nice breeze, which we seem to get on most days, and it doesn't feel too bad.

We've only been here a year, so I don't know too much about the seasons, but I do know that my least favorite so far was the spring. While the temperatures were nice, it's tornado season. While they have a narrow path and aren't as common here as you'd see in Tulsa, it can be a bit unnerving to watch the projected paths on TV. We had about 4 that the weatherman said were heading straight for our town, and 1 actually wiped out a new neighborhood 4 miles north of here.

The winters aren't bad, but it can still get cold. It might only be 35 degrees out, but factor in a 20 mph wind and it can be wicked. But we didn't have to deal with snow and ice... just chilly weather.

[jfbd6805]

Thank you all for your detailed replies!

Re: where we are coming from... we actually live in the desert in southwest Texas right now. We previously lived for several years in New York City so I am familiar with desert weather as well as NE winters! I imagine that the humidity in Dallas will be what makes the difference b/w where we live now and the DFW area. Apart from that, the seasons you are describing sound remarkably similar to the desert (except all the rain, although since we moved here we've had historical amounts of rain!)

Re: bugs/pests - where we live now we have scorpians, snakes, black widows and brown recluse and I get a monthly service to take care of that. As long as you are in a more built up area like we are, it isn't so bad. I assume that is the same in the DFW area? Please correct me if my assumptions are wrong.

Ideally I'd like to continue to stay home with our son and whoever else comes along in the next couple of years (hopefully) so work isn't an issue. In fact that is one of the reasons we are attracted to the Dallas area as it would allow us to live a lifestyle that isn't really possible in many other metro areas and raise our family the 'old fashioned' way!

Thanks for all your informative answers. It is greatly appreciated.

[USA_Mom]

In my experience what you say about bugs is true in the denser areas. I didn't run into any snakes in Texas at all, except for at the zoo (ironically I ran into lots of snakes in relatively populated areas of SoCal). At any rate I have see a few black widows even with the house being clean and sprayed, but other than that no scorpions except for at the zoo (and I am not sure about the brown recluse because I really don't *know* exactly what they look like--I see a spider and tend to leave and get my husband or son or kill it).

[jfbd6805]

USA_Mom... that's pretty much what I do to!

[kaykay]

An even more condensed version--

Summers are hot and humid. This summer has been relatively mild. It starts getting a leeeetle cooler around the first of September but still pretty warm until late September or early October. Probably won't get a good "cold spell" until late October or November.

About the "varmints" or bugs, we do have all of those you mentioned but probably less of them sounds like. We also have little gecko lizards that try to get in your house and I hate them but they are harmless. In fact, some people think they are beneficial because they eat bugs.

Snow? We get ice and freezing rain 2 or 3 times a winter usually. My son was 15 yrs old before he saw over an a half inch of snow! (And then he was in Breckenridge, Colorado!)