10 Things Texans Can’t Stand About Their Own Summers

There’s a certain sound a Texan makes opening the car door in July.

Part sigh, part surrender.

A Texas summer never is one bad day you push through. It runs as a season-long standoff with the sun.

Even the proudest Texans have a list of grievances a mile long.

1. The Steering Wheel of Fire

You park for twenty minutes. You come back to a branding iron bolted to your dashboard.

A car interior in a Texas parking lot can climb far past the outside air.

The wheel, seatbelt, and gearshift all turn into things you touch with your fingertips only. Texans keep a towel over their wheel and still flinch when they grab it.

Some drivers steer with two fingers and a prayer until the AC catches up.

Nobody wears shorts on hot leather seats twice.

2. Nights That Never Cool Off

The cruelest part of a Texas summer comes after dark, not during the afternoon. The night just won’t let go.

In much of Texas, the overnight low sticks in the high 70s or low 80s for weeks, so there’s no cool evening to recover in.

Meteorologists warn that warm nights above 80 degrees are the dangerous part of a heat wave because the body never gets a break.

A 9 p.m. walk feels like noon.

The AC just runs, and runs, and runs.

3. The Electric Bill

Keeping a Texas house at a livable temperature in August costs serious money.

The AC runs around the clock, the meter spins, and the summer bill lands like a second car payment.

Texans argue about the thermostat the way other families argue about politics.

Somebody always wants it at 68.

Somebody else is guarding the thermostat like a hawk.

Psst! Think you know Texas better than tourists do? The quiz below covers Texas facts and summer science most locals never learned.

4. Cicadas That Won't Shut Up

Texas' summer has a soundtrack, and it's a wall of screaming cicadas.

They're harmless, and they're deafening, filling every tree from the Hill Country to the coast with a drone that rises and falls all afternoon.

Texans stop hearing them by August, which is its own kind of surrender.

Then one lands on their screen door.

Nobody stays calm.

5. Grass That Gives Up

You spend spring babying your lawn, and then a Texas summer shows up and torches it.

By July, your yard goes crunchy brown, watering days get restricted in a lot of Texas towns, and the whole neighborhood turns the color of a paper bag.

Green grass in August is basically a status symbol.

The one guy with a lush lawn is either cheating the water rules or spending a fortune.

Everyone eyes his yard with suspicion.

6. The Pool That Feels Like Soup

A pool sounds like the answer for managing a Texas summer until you feel one in August.

By late summer, pool water sits bathtub warm, offering no relief at all. It's more of a lukewarm bath you share with the neighborhood kids.

Jumping in stops cooling you off around the middle of July.

The cold shower you take afterward does more than the pool did.

7. Fire Ant Landmines

Walk barefoot across a Texas yard in summer at your own risk.

Fire ants build hidden mounds in the grass, and stepping on one earns a cluster of stinging welts that itch for days.

They burrow deep in the worst heat, then swarm the second the ground cools after a rain.

Every Texan has a fire ant story.

Most of them involve flip-flops and regret.

8. Getting Dressed at 6 a.m. and Still Wilting

Texans learn to run errands at dawn, and even that barely helps.

You shower, you dress, you step outside at six in the morning, and the humidity greets you like a wet towel across your face.

By the time you reach your car, your shirt has already lost.

Makeup slides. Hair frizzes.

The whole effort feels doomed before 7 a.m.

9. The Grid Anxiety

Nothing spikes a Texan's blood pressure in summer like a text asking everyone to cut power use.

When a heat wave stacks up, the state's power grid strains under the demand of millions of running air conditioners at once.

Texans nudge their thermostats up a degree, side-eye the sky, and hope the lights hold.

Losing AC in a Texas August isn't an inconvenience.

It's an emergency.

10. The Long Goodbye

The rest of the country gets a crisp September.

Texas gets summer's encore.

The heat lingers well past Labor Day, and a Texas October can still throw a 95-degree afternoon just to remind everyone who's boss.

Fall clothes sit in the closet, mocking you, until nearly November. Pumpkins on the porch sweat next to the jack-o-lanterns.

Texans have worn shorts to more than one Halloween.

Why Texas Bakes Like It Does

Texas is huge, and its size is part of why the heat hits so many ways at once.

The Gulf pumps thick humidity into the eastern half, while the western deserts run dry and blistering, so El Paso and Houston suffer differently but suffer all the same.

The 2023 summer was Texas' second hottest on record, edged out only by the brutal stretch of 2011.

The Numbers Behind the Misery

Average July and August temperatures across much of Texas climb toward the mid-90s, and that's before humidity does its work.

Dallas averages July highs near 97 degrees, and triple-digit stretches are routine, not rare, in the hottest summers.

Add the moisture off the Gulf, and the "feels like" number climbs higher still.