What’s worse climate-wise, Southern California or Southern Texas? We are having a debate here.
[By worse, I obviously mean hotter, drier, sunnier.]
What’s Worse?
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
What’s worse climate-wise, Southern California or Southern Texas? We are having a debate here.
[By worse, I obviously mean hotter, drier, sunnier.]
Clarissa's Blog 
You can almost say that I married my wife just so I could have an excuse to move to Southern California.
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You are a mysterious, mysterious creature.
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I don’t know much about the climate in Southern Texas but it is very nice in Southern California from November to May (and, in a good year, through June as well). To be true, it is very often sunny, but not generally too hot in the fall, winter, and spring, and the humidity is low so higher temperatures are more bearable here than the same temperatures in, say, the UK (where I grew up, and where it was hotter this summer than here for many weeks!). I don’t like the summer here but fortunately fall came early this year 🙂
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I just checked and it’s 90F right now. If that’s Fall, what’s summer like?
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Summer temperatures rise above 120 F (49 C) in Palm Springs and Death Valley. You’ll love it there! 🙂
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The word death would acquire a literal meaning.
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Okay, today was significantly hotter than it has been for the last few weeks: it’s been in the 70s most days lately and we even had a downpour of rain. Next week is forecast to be low 80s, so a bit hotter than I would like but not unpleasant, especially now the days are shorter. I go for walks in the early morning and it is lovely then. Summer temps range between 80 – 100 F. It usually gets above 100 F for a week or so once a year. This year is got to 110F – ugh. Fortunately, we were out of town but it scorched our garden. One thing that I like here is that, even on warm days, it cools off okay at night (except when it is 110!) because of the low humidity. It is sad that it never snows here (except in the mountains). I’d hate to live where you have to dig your car out all the time in winter, but I miss the excitement of occasional snowy days.
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PS Sorry for going on a bit, but you did ask, and you know that British people just love to talk about the weather 😉
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No, I’m very interested and thank you. We are having a multi-country debate here.
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What do you mean by Southern Texas? You need to be more specific…. It’s been a couple decades since I’ve been, but it’s a very large area and differs a lot from east to west… (coastal wetland to desert scrub)
Also Southern California (never been) I understand there’s a thin coastal strip with more mediterraneanish weather and a much drier inland area.
How hot is too hot for you? Which do you can more stand dry heat or humid heat?
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El Paso, Texas. Does it stink? I tend to be a lot more favorably prejudiced towards it than Southern California.
This is the inland Southern California I’m talking about. I looked at some pictures. God, it’s ugly. El Paso isn’t a model of beauty either but it has some character.
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El Paso isn’t southern Texas, it’s West Texas (folk geography). West Texas is a whole lot of nothing… real scrub land – you can’t farm it and can’t raise cattle on it. Unless it’s got oil or something similar under it then it’s as close to worthless as land gets.
I remember driving from one town (signs at the edge of town warned people there was no gas station for the next 80 miles or so, we drove 80 miles through rocks and dirt and a few scrubby bushes and cacti and there was a small filling station…. and then 80 more miles of nothing before we got to New Mexico.
I haven’t been to El Paso (about the only major town in Texas I missed) but it’s very close to New Mexico and I really liked New Mexico (at least I did a few decades ago). I used to laugh at the license plates calling it “land of enchantment” but after being there…. yeah, I get it.
On the other hand El Paso is on the border with Old Mexico too and so might have problems related to the libertarian drug and border policy currently obtaining….
My idea of climate was very different then so I can’t say anything useful about that. In a vacuum I’d say El Paso hands down because of proximity to New Mexico, but the crime/border/drug situation would need to be carefully researched ahead of time of course.
do you know the (very long) western song El Paso? here’s a link:
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The border situation is what gives me pause, too.
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I lived in Riverside, California for five years. Inland Southern California (at least 50 miles from the coast) is basically an artificially irrigated desert climate, very similar to that of southern Arizona. Like Arizona, it has very little rain, lots of sun, very few flying insects, and a very dry heat. Summers can be very hot. (In other words, the natural climate there is WONDERFUL!)
I never lived in Texas, but suspect that the desert areas in Southwest Texas are very similar to those of California and Arizona; I don’t know how the maximum temperatures compare. (Phoenix, to its great credit, is the third hottest metropolitan area on the entire planet.)
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Oh, so it’s as hot as Arizona. God save us all. Are the people nice at least?
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People have been nice to me everywhere I’ve lived, so I can’t make a meaningful comparison. I wouldn’t live in California today because the state government is firmly in the hands of nutty, tax-and-spend, social engineering liberal Democrats like Governor Jerry Brown. (If you build a new house there, it must be solar-powered, etc.)
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