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Comment by gpanders | Hacker News Reader

Well said.

> Anyone whose been in Dallas in August when it's been 110 degrees with humidity at 80 percent 3 days in a row knows why Texas cannot become ... anything but Texas.

I am a native Texan and spent most of my life in different cities throughout the state. However, this alone is the primary reason I may never move back. It’s too damn hot and only going to get hotter. I now live somewhere that has 4 seasons and where I can turn off the air conditioning for weeks or months at a time. It turns out pleasant weather is a pretty important factor for me and, I imagine, many other people as well.

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> It’s too damn hot and only going to get hotter.

I'm a native Michigander who moved to Austin from Seattle 4 years ago - the summers are absolutely brutal here, and like you say, only getting worse with climate change.

Have my first kid due in April, wife and I started earnestly looking into buying, and with a 6 figure salary I don't feel like I can afford to live within Austin city limits. The schools all suck where we could theoretically afford a total rebuild project home, at the very top of our price range.

Went to Buda to see what suburban life would be like, and it was my own personal hell. 6k sq ft lots for miles on end, everyone crammed in on each other snagging their tiny slice of the American dream. No tree coverage - summers there would be absolutely awful.

With 0 signs of climate change slowing buying a house in Texas feels like a gamble on a 20 year timescale. Austin is a lovely city in many ways, but when I think in 20 year increments I don't see this growth being sustained, I think there will be an exodus out of Texas and other southern states for cooler climates within my lifetime.

Taking my family back to where I grew up - Grand Rapids Michigan area. Winters aren't exactly fun, but it's a simple thing to get warmer - you just bundle up. Summer heat there is no escaping without air conditioning, there's weeks on end where you really can't go outside.

I feel the same way about heat and cold. I actually lived in New Orleans for 3 years and, when I was in the city, it was pretty much a matter of going from AC to AC for multiple months a year. I didn't really do outdoor activities.

The one time I was in Austin over a weekend relatively recently--I had events on either side--I did go up to Fredericksburg one day but mostly I just hung out until evening when the bats came out.

The only thing that really bugs me about snow is commuting/traveling. Fortunately I don't have to commute any longer and, as you say, you can always add a layer or two.

Is NOLA still on your hip cities list?

Never was. Was a good job out of engineering grad school. Actually spent a fair bit of time on offshore rigs and in shipyards. Fairly fun place to spend a few years but very little real culture--some jazz aside--as the wealthy were too busy planning their Mardi Gras balls. And to a local, Mardi Gras was mostly a zoo. Left after a few years to get another grad degree, which was pretty much my plan from the start.

I am working on an homestead design plan for someone near Buda/Kyle. Still gathering research material about climate/water etc but won’t start working on it before June 2021.

Out of curiosity, would it be possible to build an underground home(earth sheltered) in the Buda area? Should be cooler..and tree cover above.

I'm not sure - I'm sure it is possible. I do know that basements are not common in central Texas.

Near the hills there's a ton of limestone, and farther east I think there's a lot of clay. Both make digging (or sealing) a basement more expensive then in other parts of the country.

Thanks. That’s useful information.

Without knowing anything about how the cost compares, it might make sense to look into building a home out of some thick dense walls of cement or something for natural insulation.

And you can look into some of the passive temperature regulation of traditional architectures from parts of the world with similar climates or newer green architectures that accomplish similar.

There are probably architecture firms in Central Texas that could help you with the last one.

I have found someone in Colorado who specializes in underground/earth sheltered homes. But local Texan expertise is even better as they’d know what has and hasn’t worked for local conditions.

> I'm a native Michigander who moved to Austin from Seattle 4 years ago

Did you leave Seattle for work? Would it, or the PNW generally, be another option? (Just curious.)

I was working at Microsoft in Seattle, met my wife to be there, when we met her family already had plans of moving down to San Antonio, so we followed to Austin.

I work fully remote for NTT now.

PNW is an option, and that area has a lot going for it, but affordability isn't one of them and we no longer have any family up there, whereas I have family in Michigan. I had initially moved from Michigan to the PNW, wanting to get away from the snow, but in many ways the constant drizzle in Portland and Seattle made the winter even worse.

I do love the PNW though, in the summers it is so majestic with the mountains, rivers and ocean.

This is unrelated to the topic at hand, but your point about the Texas heat led me to another train of thought. It seems that when it comes to temperature extremes, heat is the first to get criticism. But I very rarely hear any complaints about the frigid temperatures in places like Minneapolis, Chicago, or Boston. I'm trying to wrap my head around it. Are humans better situated to deal with colder temperatures than hotter temperatures? Or is it just the simple fact that it is easier to layer up than it is to layer down?

This is anecdotal but I have certainly heard my fair share of criticism of the cold as well. It likely depends on where you live, but while living in Texas I met many people who had moved there from Midwest/Northeast states who said their favorite thing about Texas was that it never snowed. They are the opposite of me in that what drew them to Texas was the heat!

The heat may be bad, but you don't have to shovel it.

My wife is very fair. Heat impacts her hard. She doesn't love cold but it seems to get to her less. I can handle either extreme but prefer high heat to low cold. I've also been told I radiate a surprising amount heat (by multiple people), so that could be part of it. My core temperature is normal but my surface temperature runs hot. When I'm cold though, I'm cold to the core and can't warm up.

You can't layer down to less than nothing. Even if you are naked, most people will find being in 100 degrees of heat with 80% humidity extremely unpleasant. And it is the high humidity that is a major factor. 110 and 15% humidity is much more tolerable.

You can't be serious. There is an entire culture of seasonal migration (snowbirds) to places like Arizona, that exists simply to escape the weather in the midwest/northeast. There is no one migrating from Texas to Ohio to enjoy the winters there.

I bet there are people who come up during the summer though. Probably not nearly as many yet, but I'm willing to bet that the population who moves north during the summer is going to increase significantly over the next 20+ years.

For those who are well enough off, you can even do it with your kids while they are on summer break, which you can't get away with in the winter.

But they won't be summering in Ohio :)

And a lot of folks already "migrate" .. to the beach, to lake houses, etc. Part of it is recreation, but part of it is escaping the heat of landlocked areas.

> There is no one migrating from Texas to Ohio to enjoy the winters there.

(N=1:) Friends here in Houston do that to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan every summer.

A few years back, relatives were visiting from the Northeast in July. When planning the visit, they said we should make sure to find some things for them to do that Houstonians do in the summer. I said no problem, we'll take you to Colorado for a month ....

>Or is it just the simple fact that it is easier to layer up than it is to layer down?

Pretty much. A good coat, scarf, gloves, hat, and long-johns will keep you comfortable outside down to single digits (f).

Plus, when you're outside doing stuff, it can feel pretty warm, even in 20 degree (f) temperatures. One of the best feelings in the world is unzipping my coat on a brisk day while working outside and feeling that cold air hit my hot, sweaty torso.

Also, people adapt to cold pretty quickly. Never-pants people are a thing, even in Russia.

People do complain about the cold though. I bet if you polled people who moved to Texas for Florida, one of their reasons for moving from the north was the weather.

Lived in Texas my entire life. It's a lot easier to get warm than it is to get cold.

If you're cold? Grab a coat or blanket. Obviously, if you're stuck outdoors exposed to the wind and snow, that's a different thing altogether.

But if you're hot... you have to try and find some shade, drink some water, and hope you don't get heat exhaustion or stroke.

Much easier to bring your body temp up than it is down. That's not even accounting for the psychological effect being hot and miserable does to tempers.

> But I very rarely hear any complaints about the frigid temperatures in places like Minneapolis, Chicago, or Boston.

Eh? This is the principle complaint when someone tries to say Minneapolis or Chicago could become the next tech hub. I've lived in both cities.

It's also the chief complaint in Minneapolis for both new transplants and those leaving for greener (pun intended) pastures. In Chicago it's also the first complaint transplants have, but I suppose leavers tend to cite taxes first, weather second.

Not sure that most people feel this way but I feel this way because of the personal discomfort.

Jackets can be added for warmth, but only a shower and change of clothes can fix the amount of sweat I experience in the humid heat.

I'm late - but yep, totally agreed personally. I can always add clothing and largely stay indoors.

In the heat I can't remove clothing, and even if I largely stay indoors even a 15 minute outdoor walk will require changing and showering.

That said, I can also walk the dog in 0C weather without winter clothing on and feel completely comfortable so we may be outliers :)

The South has been growing along with the West but the South still has the largest population at ~121 million. It sounds like I a lot of people, including myself, can stand the heat.

I have no evidence, but I posit that this is Northeast population center/media market bias at play.

Personally, I see far more people saying things like "how can you live there" about cold places, than about hot places (in the US).

However, the majority of the population in the US lives in areas that are less habitable due to cold than they are due to heat. That is to say, a New Yorker or Bostonian readily identifies with needing heat to survive, where they don't as readily identify with needing air conditioning to survive. So, extreme heat is more "foreign", more "other".

Also, in the US, air conditioning is more of a comfort factor than a life-sustaining factor. I mean, sure, there are places in the desert that are only habitable due to A/C, but there are just as many places across the south that are miserable in the summers, but people lived there 100 years ago, all the same.

Are humans better adapted to cold? Well, modern humans are descended from the few that survived the ice age, so I think there may be something to that.

But as a former Minnesotan.... I can say there is plenty to complain about with respect to cold weather. Joke 1: Minnesota has four seasons, they are called: almost-winter, winter, still-winter, and road-construction. Factoid 1: During grad school at U of M, I had a sticker for a commuter student parking lot only 6 blocks from the EE building. That winter I learned that in a -45F wind chill it takes 4 blocks for your beard to fill with ice, but in a -55F wind chill it only takes 3 blocks. Proverb 1: "There is no such thing as cold weather, only cold clothes." That comes in handy in Minnesota. Related factoid 2: I had a parka that I called my "snow blowing parka" because that is what I wore early in the (still pitch dark) morning to clear out the driveway so that I could get in to work on time. If it was as warm as 0F I never wore it, though, because I would overheat in it if I was working. Got a surprising amount of use out of it. 6 months after moving to California, I found it in my closet and thought to myself: "What the HELL were you thinking, bringing this thing out here?"

So yeah, cold weather in Minnesota is generally somewhere on the not-fun to dangerous end of the spectrum, and layering up is the way to go, with a good dose of thinking ahead. But on the list of reasons I would never move back, cold weather is actually number 3. Number 2 is ridiculous taxes for what you get, number 1 is those infernal deer flies -- think pesky like mosquitoes (the Minnesota state bird) except that every bite takes a chunk of flesh.

My parents actually moved to Arizona from Chicago because they go sick of the cold weather. Apparently the cold gets harder on you the older you are; in my parents case the cold made their arthritis worse.

Also while the summers in Arizona are hot, at least they are not humid. Its a much more easy to tolerate dry heat

> Also while the summers in Arizona are hot, at least they are not humid. Its a much more easy to tolerate dry heat

And by "hot", it is meant 50C in some places, in which cases planes cannot fly because of density altitude issues:

* https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/20/533662790...

IIRC, there are cooler places in Arizona as well (mountains?).

>IIRC, there are cooler places in Arizona as well (mountains?).

Yes. You get snow in the winter in places like Flagstaff.

As someone who really doesn't like humid heat, I still find the low southwestern deserts relatively tolerable (not that you're going to go for a mid-day hike in the summer). That said, if I were to live in that area of the country, I would probably want to be someplace up higher.

Cold climates and obesity are complementary, USA has an "obesity epidemic", so you see less complaining about the cold than hot.

As an obese colleague once told me "you can't get more naked than naked, but I can put on as much clothes as needed", in a climatic conversation comparing his midwest origins vs. "hot" SV in California.

I've lived in Beijing (sub-zero winters) and currently live in Singapore (30 degrees/80%+ humidity year-round).

I would much prefer to face a cold winter than hot and humid year-round. The weather is the main reason I'll eventually leave Singapore, there's simply nothing you can do to escape the heat/humidity. I work from home and literally run the A/C 24/7, and even then I still never feel "comfortable" (because it's too cold when it's too low, and when it's too high it doesn't evaporate enough sweat).

Well, the heat AND the humidity! People joke about this saying but having moved from Texas to SoCal it really makes a difference. (Which is good for California because it’s only getting hotter there...)

Doesn't half of Texas have seasons? I only drove through Amarillo but there was snow when I did. I always assumed the western half was drier and cooler, low humidity, etc.

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