Last week Eric offered a tip for Houston-area newbies for surviving Houston’s fearsome heat and houmidity. (And no, that’s not a typo.) That inspired many of you to offer your own suggestions for dealing with summer. We’ve compiled the best of the best so you can work on your climatological coping skills.
As a native of SE Texas, summer is hot and that’s the fact, Jack! But…I have found that, if I talk or complain about the heat in June or July, that just seems to prolong the summer unnecessarily. Instead, I avoid those water cooler conversations about the heat…until August, then I let it all hang out! Because sometimes fronts start making their way into H-Town a few weeks into September, and it cools down to like 88 degrees and everyone starts thinking it’s fall and pulls out their sweaters! This strategy of denial means you only have a month in a half of hot weather…August and maybe half of September! All our our newly arrived neighbors thank me when I share this strategy with them!
– Sharron Cox
I don’t know if it truly helps any, but my psychological trick to get through the summers recently has been to count the weeks instead of the days. 9 weeks til September just on some psychological level feels better than 74 days. Maybe it’s because by this point, we’re typically mowing once a week, and I really don’t wanna by the time August comes around. And I know we’re getting close to only needing to do single digit cuts left.
– Josh Sorensen
Face the heat head on. Go outside for a walk at 3 PM. Go for a run in the morning and greet the rising sun. Lay in the grass at 2 PM. Feel the radiation. Sweat through the humidity. Learn to love that which we cannot change. This is the best way to deal with summer heat in Houston. Before you know it, you will think 90 degrees feels moderate. A slight breeze and you will have goose bumps. September starts to feel chilly.
– Humidity connoisseur
I am a native, and have lived in two other places, Los Angeles and Saudi Arabia. When I start to feel as though summer will never end (and honestly, it’s hot through sometimes mid November here) I remember how I felt when I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac in Dhahran, and the humidity slapped me in the face. It was 110F in the summer there with 80 to 90% humidity. I will never forget that. Houston is absolutely awful, but that was just a smidge worse (at the time – we’ll see how things change 🙁 )
– Ashley
I also try not to complain too much until August, go swimming at night to reset my body temperature, and my new summer hack is hanging out in the cheese aisle at HEB. Even colder than a movie theater and can grocery shop too.
– Cheryl Detten
My Summer Survival Strategies:
1. Sit outside sometimes, to become acclimated, as another commenter said. The following two steps will help with this.
2. Cold iced Cafe du Monde made with tons of brown sugar and milk at 2 pm, outside. It’s the worst part of the day but you get to have coffee!
3. Wine and Chips O’Clock at 4 pm, outside. The worst part of the day’s heat is over! (I prefer white wine and potato chips.)
4. August 14: official Changing of the Morning Light Day. The sunlight in the morning changes from harsh blue-white to a softer yellow-white.
5. August 28 CHANGING OF THE LIGHT DAY!!! The light is noticably softer and golden. You have made it thru the worst. Only a month until the moveable feast that is COOL FRONT DAY!!!
Oh, and visit the gem and mineral section of the Science Museum. Like being in an ice cold glittery sparkly cave.
– Bea
One thing that gets me through the Houston summer is just knowing that for 8 months of the year between mid September and mid May the weather is actually quite decent and tolerable. Just gotta get through July and August and Fall will be right around the corner.
– Anthony Stott
A trick I do is make it a point to get out for 20 or 30 minutes during the peak heat of the day. 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. I’ll get out and go for a motorcycle ride or do a little bit of work in the yard. Maybe just 15 minutes! lol. What this does is allows me to be absolutely scorched during that time and comparatively it makes the mornings and evenings feel much better.
– Scott Smith
Lived in Texas most of my life, especially the Houston area. Long enough to grasp the Biblical nature of this area: Dust to Dust, or Noah’s Ark.
– Shawn Harrison
If these pearls of heat-related wisdom inspire you to offer tips of your own, please do so in the comments!
My solution is simple. I eat popsicles with my grandkids!
LOL. “Hanging out in the cheese aisle at HEB”!
So true! Lol
Become friends with someone who access to a pool 🙂
I grew up in a cooler and less humid climate. At the beginning of summer I get out and do yard work and get a good sweat going, making sure to rehydrate. I turn up the thermostat to 73-75 degrees. After a few days, I’m well acclimated. Our ancestors were tough people. We all have it in us.
Especially if you have kids, you’ve got to be strategic with the day. I’m thinking of weekends here. Consider not sleeping in, to wake up early and get everyone outside when it’s bearable. By 11am, the outdoor time is pretty much over, so that’s the time for your indoor activities. I know we usually take our time waking up, kids watching cartoons in the mornings. But save that until after lunch. Then after dinner you can head back outside for a little while.
Don’t wish your life away! So what if it is hot? You are alive and in Houston, Texas! Baseball season. Football not far behind. Just tell yourself it is better than dark days, snow and ice. ‘Cause it is. If your air conditioner goes out go to Trader Joe’s. Place is like a meat locker.
Love this!!! I’m a believer in getting out in the heat and humidity several times a day…and enjoying pools and rivers any time I can…
If possible, plan a trip for the first half of September. It gives you something to look forward to in August and when you get back you can say “it’s almost October” and by that time 90-92 feels like a break.
When I am walking in the park early morning with my dog – sweating at 7:30 AM – I like to think about how much we will enjoy the 8 good months!
Throughout the month of August, I like to pull all the curtains (the heat blocking ones) crank down the AC, and snuggle up on the couch to watch my favorite genre of TV: Murder Shows Set in Places Where They Always Have to Wear Jackets.
Shetland. The Fall. Broadchurch. Luther. Happy Valley. The accents are a bonus.
I find that soaking in a bathtub full of cold water and ice does the trick pretty well.
Half of September? I’ll settle for half of October thank you! And, no, I can’t stand the long nights after the time changes. The only benefits of summer are the longer days that we get to play.
I decorate for fall as soon as school starts. I burn all my cinnamon spice candles and drink pumpkin coffee. It tricks my brain into thinking it’s cooler outside than it is during the dog days of summer.
I’m a native Houstonian, born in a hospital downtown and never lived farther outside the loop than @3 miles… A couple of things that keep me from feeling the summer heat: 1) excellent air-conditioning at the office, at home, wherever. 2) Remembering that all the humidity keeps my skin dewy and young-looking and I don’t have to spend anything on moisturizers, etc. (more $ for #1 air conditioning!).
I worked in Arizona one summer week for 38 days and it got to a dry 120 degrees. I actually couldn’t walk across the street for lunch. When I got off the plane in Houston 90 degrees and high humidity felt like exactly what I needed to live.
I will never forget when I was on the flight down here from the Northeast, to move here. It was August. Someone asked the flight attendant what the weather was like in Houston that day.
“Oh, you know, it’s like living inside a dog’s mouth,” he replied.
Still makes me laugh.
Oh, and my mother, who keeps her TV tuned to the weather channel, will call in the summer and say, “I see it’s 109+ degrees down there.” I wait until winter and return the favor. “Oh, I see it’s 17 degrees there, and doesn’t it get dark by 4 pm?”
In Houston of course you have two people on speed dial, other than your Mom and bff’s: your bug person and your aircon person. And if you’re fortunate to get good ones, keep them and send them home with a loaf of homemade bread. Effective aircon is the answer to surviving the Houston heat. And you know you’re a true Houstonian (born or otherwise) when you can tell the difference between 68F and 70F in less than 3 seconds.
I remember back in August 1992, we had an extremely rare cool front come through. The dew point plummeted and the highs for a few days never got out of the 80s. That was coincidentally when the GOP convention was in town. Despite the great weather, it didn’t do them much good in the year of the Perot.
I just returned from NYC where the rooftop cafe of The Met was closed “due to excessive heat”. It was a mere 86 degrees. Houston would never be open under those parameters!
Thanks for the suggestions! Back in the 40s and 50s when I was a kid in San Antonio, we had some pretty hot summers but they were always with dry heat. I didn’t know humidity until I moved here and yet when I have gone back to San Antonio over several decades, I now feel the humidity there. Can someone explain this? Thanks.
Very good advice! ☀️💛🌻
I count down the weeks between July 4th and Labor Day. It does go fast. The last week of August, I bring out all of my indoor fall decor. Fall colors and the AC going almost nonstop brings positive vibes and the knowledge that our first coolish front is less than a month away.
What heat?
mind over matter approach, nice
I have relatives in NM, so I just remind myself of the feeling of having every drop of moisture sucked from my skin when I visit out there.
Then I embrace the humidity. Women in Phoenix and Albuquerque pay top dollar to get the kind of youth-giving steam facial that I get for free every day just by walking outside! And not to brag, but I do have a remarkable absence of lines on my face for someone my age!
Binge watch Life Below Zero & High Arctic Haulers! Works!😁
ALL GREAT IDEAS! A friend sent this bit of communication.
New Yorker moving to Houston: “I hear it’s really hot in Houston. Can you tell me how hot?”
Houstonian: “Have you ever been cremated?”
Nothing forged me in the fires of Houston heat like summer of 2023. Everything pales in comparison. I’ll echo others on the pool; this is our first year with a pool and it makes a night and day difference. Hopping in at night and getting out and its actually quite cold. It helps you forget how bad the summer is and you get a reprieve from what feels like never ending heat.
I think the comments about acclimating are worthwhile. My first year here was interesting. I thought if aliens visited here they would report back that the planet was too hot for human habitation. I just came from North Louisiana not the North Pole!!! Then I started school at U of H in September. Around October I got out of my car in their parking lot in tee shirt and jeans and watched a woman in front of me zipping up a parka with a fur lined hood. The next year did not seem so hot. My coping skill is to work about 30 minutes in the heat and come in, hydrate and cool down for about an hour, then do 30 more minutes, etc. I get a good bit done that way and me and my partner walk 2 miles each day at 7 PM. That’s splits the difference on temp and humidity. Back in May , I could not walk 15 minutes under those conditions. I have noticed that I acclimate and Im 83.