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Texas has Mediterranean and Desert type climates, which are pleasant, but dull in terms of variety vs Japan.
I don't think anywhere in Texas is Mediterranean. Indeed, some areas of the state see a rainfall decline in the summer relative to other seasons (particularly spring and fall), but not to the extent that would be seen with Med climates. It seems more to do with circulation w/ respect to geography rather than true atmospheric patterns.
Texas (especially the southern half) would benefit more from a "trade-wind" style of pattern, where summer winds are predominantly easterly. Winter would have the protection of the subtropical ridge. That's the scenario where I'd start picking places in Texas over Japan.
I'll vote for Japan mainly because of Okinawa and smaller islands to its south. Texas doesn't have anything comparable
This line of thinking doesn't really make sense - Okinawa isn't warmer than much of Texas, and the southern islands are tiny and far enough removed as to be irrelevant. Texas is, overall, so much warmer, a warm loving is going to find more to love about Texas than Japan.
I don't think anywhere in Texas is Mediterranean. Indeed, some areas of the state see a rainfall decline in the summer relative to other seasons (particularly spring and fall), but not to the extent that would be seen with Med climates. It seems more to do with circulation w/ respect to geography rather than true atmospheric patterns.
Texas (especially the southern half) would benefit more from a "trade-wind" style of pattern, where summer winds are predominantly easterly. Winter would have the protection of the subtropical ridge. That's the scenario where I'd start picking places in Texas over Japan.
Texas has a hot-summer mediterranean microclimate in some places around Austin, I believe.
Texas is a prime example of how North America's geography screws up an otherwise great latitudinal location. This applies not only for the record lows, but actually also for the heat/dryness in many areas of the state as well. Case in point, South Padre Island near the Tropic of Cancer has a record low of 17F! Whereas you don't even need to be near Okinawa to get milder extremes, like this city at 34N near Tokyo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shizuoka_(city)#Climate
And yet South Padre has warmer averages than pretty much anywhere in mainland Japan. Are you seriously using a record cold temp of 17 set in the 1890s as representative of Texas' climate? Wow. Sheer idiocy.
Texas's land size can lead to higher diversity in climate type, but do keep in mind that Japan, proportion wise, has greater mountain coverage, with taller peaks than in Texas. This allows for diversity in climate, in regards to the various orographic "micro-climates" that can result.
Texas is not land-locked at all.
The territory included within the country of Japan is such that it allows for the inclusion of many smaller island chains (Ryuku Islands, Okinawa); these islands extend far south into tropical latitudes, and allow the country to have territory farther south in latitude than Texas does.
Those island chains are extremely tiny. The bulk of Japan is well north of Texas in latitude.
If the USA had Japan's geography, people would be emphasizing the "frigid arctic nature that all of the US falls under, which a few scattered islands simply can't mitigate" - but because Japan and not the US has them, a few scattered, far removed, tiny southerly islands all of a sudden means that all of Japan is a "tropical paradise" to all of those people who throw a fit if you call the US south subtropical. Because anti-Americanism is flattered the best if you portray America as a miserable, extreme, frigid continental wasteland to those jealous people from less desirable climates.
You people are seriously deranged, hahaha.
Texas has plenty of mountain and canyon topography - it does nothing but cover the country in less livable, colder terrain, at elevation.
I think I've read on a thread on this forum that US sunshine hours are overestimated. If that is the case, then all of the US appears sunnier than it really is; you just might see sunshine hours dip down to 2,000 or below in some of these Gulf Coast locales.
The low 90s on the Texas coast aren't that bad, because while humidity is present, wind speeds are very high, some of the highest in the US.
You hardly see sunshine hours dip that low in parts of New England - I'm laughing that you think you'd see sunshine hours lower than 2,000 on the Gulf Coast.
Texas has areas of desert (El Paso), which obviously are going to be full of sunshine. However, like I said, the Gulf Coastal areas of the state aren't that sunny annually, only in the mid 2000 hours range with the current system.
The Texas sea-breezes are very strong, and can penetrate far inland into the state; this is because the hot temps seen in the state's interior create vast differential from the cooler ocean, so a strong gradient is established, in the form of wind. This allows places like Corpus to be one of the windiest cities in the US.
With lots of humidity comes lots of cloud cover, so the humid areas of Texas are going to be filled with clouds much of the time. With all those clouds come reduced amounts of sunshine.
I agree that Japan is much cloudier and rainier as a whole (that is why I voted for it), but I find that Texas does have its parts that come close to that ideal.
I can think of no areas of Texas that are known for being cloudy or rainy whatsoever.
Anyways, as much as I like Texas, I think I have to give this one to Japan. The country has real wet, monsoonal humid subtropical climates, with very comfortable summers, turning into straight out rainforests on some of the outer island territories; it makes Texas (and Southeastern US as a whole, for that matter), look rain-starved in comparison. They also have quite mild winters, in the sense that they don't get too severely cold in winter. Nothing like Yakushima in Texas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakushima#Climate
In contrast, only the far eastern parts of Texas close to the Gulf have the appreciably wet humid subtropical climates with relatively mild winters; these parts constitute Southeast Texas, and include places like Beaumont, Port Arthur, Houston, and Liberty. The South Texas coastal areas (south of the Houston Metro) have decent mild to warm winters for tropical vegetation (especially at South Padre Island), but are otherwise too dry. The rest of the state is just too dry, or just too continental for my liking.
Every major city within the humid subtropical regime of Texas get's higher average highs and mean maximums all throughout winter than Yakushima.
Seriously, this need to shift goal posts to straight up lie about the US's climate in particular smacks of some kind of bizarre anti-US bias. Okinawa hardly has tropical rainforests - it has a tropical rainforest climate. It's forests are similar to the ones you can find along the Rio Grande in south Texas, which are subtropical/tropical in ecology.
If you're denigrating Texas as "too continental" when none of the state is classified as humid continental, and praising Japan when most of it's territory is taken up by the humid continental climate regime, you are being unreasonable, making ridiculously deluded conclusions that don't line up with reality.
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