Dallas Heat Wave 2018 (Houston, Happy: construction, parking, metro area)

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Dallaz

Yes, Summer is the driest season. During this time, a lot of the vegetation (if not irrgated) starts to brown out. North Texas is already starting to brown due to the intense summer heat and lack of rain. Spring and Fall are the wettest seasons.

January, August and July are the driest months in ascending order FWIIW.

[Jeohnny]

Humidity has dropped quite fast as of now

[lvmensch]

Originally Posted by Jeohnny

Humidity has dropped quite fast as of now

At the moment Dallas is 102 and 25% for a heat index of 103

Las Vegas is 104 and 8% for a heat index of 97.

Was pretty much that way all of June.

So the Las Vegas temperature is mostly higher but the heat index is mostly higher in Dallas.

Be interesting to see what it does after the middle of July...the Las Vegas Temperature tends to drop but the humidity comes up. So the heat index may actually be higher here.

[Stevehanrahan41]

Originally Posted by lvmensch

At the moment Dallas is 102 and 25% for a heat index of 103

Las Vegas is 104 and 8% for a heat index of 97.

Was pretty much that way all of June.

So the Las Vegas temperature is mostly higher but the heat index is mostly higher in Dallas.

Be interesting to see what it does after the middle of July...the Las Vegas Temperature tends to drop but the humidity comes up. So the heat index may actually be higher here.

Man I don’t care what it is in Vegas. It’s hot here. Lol

[lvmensch]

Originally Posted by Stevehanrahan41

Man I don’t care what it is in Vegas. It’s hot here. Lol

I actually find it interesting. We get blasted for being horribly hot. Only big city that is worse is Phoenix. Interesting that for at least part of the summer we are more comfortable than Dallas.

And it is reasonably pleasant here at this time of year up to a 100. Too much at 105 or 110. But we routinely leave half the house open until noon when outside reaches 100. The other half of the house is always air conditioned.

I suspect this is true only in the shade. We get very high sun exposure. So any of the algorithms that include sun exposure will always find LV hotter than Dallas though a good bit cooler than Phoenix.

[First24]

Originally Posted by Chloe333

Is the summer here the driest season? I thought it would rain a bit more here with all of the vegetation that exits in North Texas. When is the rainiest season in DFW?

You can never rely on summer precipitation patterns in DFW on a year to year basis. You may get a span of 2-3 years of relatively wet mild summers (mild meaning no long spells dry spells with temps 95 or above). Most years though, you get months of 95+ degree days with thunderstorms few and far between. I remember days of just wanting to see a cloud in the sky.

[Dallaz]

Originally Posted by Jeohnny

Humidity has dropped quite fast as of now

It really did earlier today. The dew points were in the low 70s around 1 pm. The feels like temps were as high as 109 during that time too. Soon after it got over 100 degrees, the dew points tanked to 62 degrees at DFW. So, the feels like temp was only a couple of degrees higher than the actual temp. It still was very hot but not unbearable like it was earlier in the day.

[wxf848]

Deserts are dry places, but most of them aren't always dry. Another characteristic is great variability of rainfall. A semi-joke in a desert community may be that the average precipitation is 1 foot per year, but they'll have no rain for 2 years and then three feet of rain the third year.

The DFW area is on the edge of a desert, and has some of that characteristic. Sometimes we'll get pretty consistent rainfall around normal amounts for years. Sometimes we get a multi-year drought. And sometimes we get a year or two with a lot of rain. Summer and winter are the dry seasons, on average, and spring and fall are the wet seasons. Each year can vary. Sometimes (I rather enjoy these years) we'll get rain from April until July. In flood after flood after flood, it rains for months. This is when the big rivers flood. Some years we have enormous rains in spring or early summer and the big rivers flood quickly and some flood control lakes rise several feet per day.

A lot of people don't think of flooding as a desert characteristic, but it is. The drought and flood cycle is nearly constant in the desert. In the DFW area, at the edge of the desert, we don't have that kind of extreme, but we do have a lot of variability. You can't count on any consistent precipitation patterns. The most reliable pattern, I'd say, is that late summer is pretty dry unless we get tropical storm.

[Treasurevalley92]

Originally Posted by wxf848

Deserts are dry places, but most of them aren't always dry. Another characteristic is great variability of rainfall. A semi-joke in a desert community may be that the average precipitation is 1 foot per year, but they'll have no rain for 2 years and then three feet of rain the third year.

The DFW area is on the edge of a desert, and has some of that characteristic. Sometimes we'll get pretty consistent rainfall around normal amounts for years. Sometimes we get a multi-year drought. And sometimes we get a year or two with a lot of rain. Summer and winter are the dry seasons, on average, and spring and fall are the wet seasons. Each year can vary. Sometimes (I rather enjoy these years) we'll get rain from April until July. In flood after flood after flood, it rains for months. This is when the big rivers flood. Some years we have enormous rains in spring or early summer and the big rivers flood quickly and some flood control lakes rise several feet per day.

A lot of people don't think of flooding as a desert characteristic, but it is. The drought and flood cycle is nearly constant in the desert. In the DFW area, at the edge of the desert, we don't have that kind of extreme, but we do have a lot of variability. You can't count on any consistent precipitation patterns. The most reliable pattern, I'd say, is that late summer is pretty dry unless we get tropical storm.

I wouldn't say it's the edge of a desert, the actual desert is hours away. It close (kinda) to the dividing line where it becomes semi arid, and flash flooding can be a serious issue in the semi arid west, but even then Dallas is well into the humid sub tropical zone.

DFW gets about 36 inches of rain a year. That is a ton of rain compared to the rest of the semi arid west. I don't have in ground sprinklers here and my grass isn't all dead.

Some years are rainier than others and Dallas is prone to have some flooding areas, but that isn't because Dallas is actually a desert (or really near one).

[Treasurevalley92]

My AC unit died Saturday night. It's pretty rough when it's 90 degrees in your house at midnight and you don't want to open the windows because it's actually 3-5 degrees cooler inside with less humidity as was the case last night... lol