Help me choose what area of Texas to live in! (Houston: how much, vs)

[Danbo1957]

Victoria and Huntsville in Texas meet your needs pretty well.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by RSTX

I see east/southeast TX as your spot. Think Tyler area. Although, Bryan/College Station does have palm trees.

Tyler doesn't have many palm trees. Just putting that out there. Tyler is in NE Texas. (I live here. I also love it here.)

But the winters are mild and the summers are hot. Also humid but I don't think any more humid than St. Louis. And not NEARLY as humid as Houston or SE Texas.

We do get occasional freezes here in the winter though, frost occasionally (which is why we don't have many palm trees).

OP - if you like palm trees I think you are going to have to deal with humidity.

I am pretty familiar with the Texas Hill Country and it's a beautiful area but it also doesn't have many palm trees and none "naturally." I think the only place you will find those in abundance is along the Texas coast. The reason they don't grow naturally is because it gets too cold in most of Texas. So I mean, even if you grow palm trees in your yard, you are probably going to have to wrap them in the winter, which is a pain and which also looks pretty bad. You should see the stupid palm trees here that are in a particular business parking lot. They've died twice and been replaced twice. Now they wrap them in tin foil every winter which looks horrible. It's like they were determined to have some palm trees - whatever it took! People joke about it all the time here.

[turf3]

I think anyplace north of Austin you can plant palm trees, and they'll do fine, until after several years you get that real hard freeze, and that's the end of your palm tree. This happened to us in Dallas.

The climatic regions of the state are well defined and well known, so you can look it all up. Basically, you have east Texas which is the wettest area of the state, getting wetter as you go south. The Coastal Plain runs, unsurprisingly, along the coast, and it's hot flat and humid there. The Central Texas grasslands run from just east of Dallas to somewhere roughly Abilene, and south to maybe just north of Austin. Dallas and east, there's enough rain for row crop agriculture without irrigation (though much of that has been supplanted by pasturage because there are dry years when row crops fail). West of Fort Worth it's going to be mostly ranching as row crops are hard to grow without irrigation. Westish of Austin, you have the Hill Country which is rolling country, fairly dry. Lower humidity out there. West of all this and towards the north, is true West Texas (Midessa, Amarillo, Lubbock) which is pretty dry, hot in summer and fairly cold in winter; and towards the south is Big Bend country ( Marathon, Alpine, El Paso) - some of this area is actually considered part of the Chihuahua-Coahuila Desert, and the areas that get too much rain to be true desert are still damn hot and dry.

If you intend to work as a paramedic I would expect any city of medium size and above has plenty of openings (say, any place Tyler size or larger) though I'm not in the field and I don't really know anything about hiring practices.

In general, Texas is part of the Great Plains. If you have rain and areas of forest, you're going to have humidity. Summers in the whole state are hot by Yankee standards and winters are mild by the same standards (though I don't care where you're from, when it's 34 degrees in Lubbock and the wind's coming straight down from Canada at 50 mph with nothing to slow it down between there and Saskatchewan but one barb wire fence - and it's down - that's still damn cold). Nowhere in the eastern half of the state where there's enough rain to support significant tree growth, is the humidity low by the standards of the Mountain West, though Floridians will laugh at people from Fort Worth complaining about humidity.

[JTEMT-B]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

Tyler doesn't have many palm trees. Just putting that out there. Tyler is in NE Texas. (I live here. I also love it here.)

But the winters are mild and the summers are hot. Also humid but I don't think any more humid than St. Louis. And not NEARLY as humid as Houston or SE Texas.

We do get occasional freezes here in the winter though, frost occasionally (which is why we don't have many palm trees).

OP - if you like palm trees I think you are going to have to deal with humidity.

I am pretty familiar with the Texas Hill Country and it's a beautiful area but it also doesn't have many palm trees and none "naturally." I think the only place you will find those in abundance is along the Texas coast. The reason they don't grow naturally is because it gets too cold in most of Texas. So I mean, even if you grow palm trees in your yard, you are probably going to have to wrap them in the winter, which is a pain and which also looks pretty bad. You should see the stupid palm trees here that are in a particular business parking lot. They've died twice and been replaced twice. Now they wrap them in tin foil every winter which looks horrible. It's like they were determined to have some palm trees - whatever it took! People joke about it all the time here.

Different palms can survive different weather changes. Windmill palms are typically rated down to 10 degrees, which is why you see a lot of them around the lakes in DFW, and there’s even a guy who grows them up here in MO with no issues. The problem is that people use the wrong kind of palms.

There’s a good amount of palms in Austin and San Antonio as well.

[tstone]

Houston is just as humid as Corpus, Victoria, Huntsville, Galveston. You are not getting into low-humidity territory until you get west of the Hill Country- or better yet, west of the Pecos River. As a reference point Austin has about the same humidity as Atlanta.

BTW Houston is currently 91 w/ 29% humidity. But it is still technically late spring. When the summer heat is at peak it is typically about 95 with about 50% humidity. If humidity creeps closer to 60% in the daytime it is heat advisory time.

[Run To The Hills]

Don't let anybody fool you. All of these cities are classified as humid/subtropical. Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio all are Humid Subtropical climates. If you want dry air you will need to go to the southwestern United States. If you want moderate summers I recommend the Northwest US. None of these places are known for their great weather.

Originally Posted by tstone

Houston is just as humid as Corpus, Victoria, Huntsville, Galveston. You are not getting into low-humidity territory until you get west of the Hill Country- or better yet, west of the Pecos River. As a reference point Austin has about the same humidity as Atlanta.

BTW Houston is currently 91 w/ 29% humidity. But it is still technically late spring. When the summer heat is at peak it is typically about 95 with about 50% humidity. If humidity creeps closer to 60% in the daytime it is heat advisory time.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by JTEMT-B

Different palms can survive different weather changes. Windmill palms are typically rated down to 10 degrees, which is why you see a lot of them around the lakes in DFW, and there’s even a guy who grows them up here in MO with no issues. The problem is that people use the wrong kind of palms.

There’s a good amount of palms in Austin and San Antonio as well.

Well, for some perspective, Austin is at least 5 hours' drive south of Tyler, and San Antonio is 6. Lots and lots of differences. Listen, people are trying to tell you that palm trees don't grow well in NE Texas. You can believe us or not, but they're tricky.

Also it tends to be more humid the more south and east you go. I don't personally find the Tyler area to be uncomfortably humid but that's because I lived in New Orleans, and Georgia, and South Carolina so it's also a matter of perspective. But I'd find Houston to be too humid (like New Orleans). That's just me - clearly lots of people don't mind it too much.

[turf3]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

Well, for some perspective, Austin is at least 5 hours' drive south of Tyler, and San Antonio is 6. Lots and lots of differences. Listen, people are trying to tell you that palm trees don't grow well in NE Texas. You can believe us or not, but they're tricky.

Also it tends to be more humid the more south and east you go. I don't personally find the Tyler area to be uncomfortably humid but that's because I lived in New Orleans, and Georgia, and South Carolina so it's also a matter of perspective. But I'd find Houston to be too humid (like New Orleans). That's just me - clearly lots of people don't mind it too much.

I also suspect the alkaline soil found basically anywhere west of a line roughly Dallas-Austin is not ideal for palm trees. Pine trees, azaleas, etc., basically all acid-loving plants, don't thrive on the blackland prairie. You need that red iron-rich soil of East Texas.

[JTEMT-B]

Originally Posted by Run To The Hills

Don't let anybody fool you. All of these cities are classified as humid/subtropical. Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio all are Humid Subtropical climates. If you want dry air you will need to go to the southwestern United States. If you want moderate summers I recommend the Northwest US. None of these places are known for their great weather.

Great weather is subjective. I thought Cancun was pretty amazing weather, and that was 90 with 80-90% humidity, so idk. I guess I just have to visit and see.

I’m probably going to round rock this winter, and I might stop by Conroe.

[jackalope48]

Corpus Fire Union contract does allow for alternative hiring of just paramedics who are restricted to ambulance service. All fire trainees are cross trained as paramedics and at this point the only people in the department without paramedic certification are the engineer/drivers of the fire trucks. All the other guys have it because otherwise the trucks would sit in the station all day. We have less than a fire call a day for the whole city but like 40k ems calls a year.

As a result the union was ok with paramedic only hiring because the ambulance crews work their asses off. Since assignments are selected by time of service all the young guys work ambulances. They average 5 times the call volume.

If you are interested you might call them. Usually the first thing that gets cut on fire in a recession is the new class(since they can't work but get paid) so a recession is usually when they hire transfer paramedics.

I would caution you that we are not inherently conservative here. Other than Midwest and California transplants our conservatives are of the pro business moderate and libertarian flavor. This may or may not be your speed.

Dry we only really get in the late Fall and Winter. Cold Fronts are a day of rain and then a week highs in the 60s and low seventies. We are the northern tip of the Central American monsoon area so our "cooler" Summer times are it raining like hell in the afternoon. Our advantage over Houston is slightly lower humidity(we aren't built on a swamp) and a good afternoon breeze off the gulf except for August when the wind stops and it sucks. Our high temps do tend to be about 10 degrees lower than everyone else in the Summer.