I figured if I could handle it then, the rest of the year would be great. It is, it’s basically vacation weather 7 months out of the year with multiple biomes within a 2 hour driving radius. You can literally drive an hour into a snow fall in the winter.
I grew up in humidity & constant allergies. AZ is heaven by comparison. The dry heat really is amazing for health and sinuses.
But if we take metro areas (MSA) -- which is somewhat more representative of size -- it falls off to 10th place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area#...
It's still quite high. I'm surprised so many people like to live in hot places. I'm told it's a "dry heat" though, so it's not as bad. You can use swamp coolers to cool down.
Hot and humid places are more uncomfortable. Houston in August is 110 F with 80+ % humidity. It's oppressively hot.
Drier than the south still isn't dry enough when it's 117°F with a dewpoint of 65°F. You'll end up with output temps in the high 80s (or higher), and the output air will be extremely wet.
These things have to be a choice for people
A lot of people choose sun
The key to enjoying Phoenix is understanding that from October to May or so, it's basically San Diego. That's when you do all your outside stuff, you walk places, you have a great time. Then from May to October it's the surface of the sun.
I also lived in the Cayman Islands for three years. 88F 88% humidity is far more uncomfortable than 110F 15% in Arizona.
The most uncomfortable places I've been are Southeast Asia and India. 95F 90% and I could barely breathe and came close to heat stroke a number of times.
Arizona summers are more tolerable to me than the tropics or the Gulf coast state summers.
I agree with you there, but I'd also mention that in Phoenix, it's not the heat that will kill you, it's the sun. The deserts in Arizona and eastern California have the most intense sun in the US. If you can't find shade, for example while hiking in the desert, the climate in Phoenix is brutal.
It's also very easy to get dehydration and low blood sodium, because sweat evaporates so fast you don't even realize you're sweating.
This all makes the climate very dangerous - it's not as uncomfortable as heat with high humidity, but it will sneak up and kill you. One third of all heat related deaths in the US happen in Arizona.[1]
1: https://apnews.com/article/record-heat-deadly-climate-change...
Many of the people moving to Arizona come from the midwest where they know all about living for a summer at a hot place.
Highest dew point ever recorded in the US comes from Minnesota in the summer. The people moving from the midwest to Arizona are choosing somewhere more arid.
What they are giving up is shoveling snow, which is a heart attack waiting to happen for anyone over 50.
> The combination of a heat wave and power outages “is the most deadly climate-related event we can imagine,” said Stone.
> He and a team of scientists explored the potential impacts of a heat wave coinciding with a multi-day outage caused by extreme weather or a cyberattack. Focusing on Atlanta, Detroit and Phoenix, they looked at exposure inside people’s homes, a major driver of heat-related illness during a power outage.
> The figures were particularly stark for Phoenix. During a three to four-day heat event and outage, half the city’s population — nearly 800,000 people — would require hospital treatment for heat-related illnesses, according to the findings. More than 13,000 would die.
> A power outage in Phoenix causes a “very dramatic shift in heat illness,” Stone said, because the city’s climate is so extreme and people struggle to adapt. In an unfortunate irony, widespread air conditioning may actually make residents less resilient because they are so acclimatized to cooling in their homes and workplaces, Stone said.
The fact that the heat doesn't go away even at night is another issue. If the power ever fails for vulnerable populations, they're immediately in danger. There's no reprieve of night or insulation you can use to fully mitigate those conditions.
I don't know whether you know this or not, but you don't actually have to be out in the 100F heat all day if you live in Arizona.
Somebody has to shovel the snow, though, if you live in the places people move to Arizona from. Otherwise your car can't get out of the garage. Sometimes you can't even get out of the front door.
No robots do that snow shoveling thing yet, when they do, sign me up.
That's still not going to stop the drain of people from Michigan or say upstate New York to Arizona.
No robots, but you don’t really need to exert yourself to get rid of snow. Self-propelled snow throwers with heated grips and a cab are a thing. For example: https://snowfallblowers.com/2020/09/09/ariens-11528-snow-thr...
I have a setup similar to this, using it about as much effort as walking a small dog.
> That's still not going to stop the drain of people from Michigan or say upstate New York to Arizona.
Good, more fresh water, natural splendor, cheap housing, mild winters[0], and beautiful fall colors for us.
[0] To be honest I’ve only even used that snow thrower maybe thrice in the past 2 years in southeast Michigan, winters are getting warmer and warmer every year it seems. The river barely even freezes any more, we had enough snow to cover the grass for maybe 2 total weeks last year.
Not advice everyone can take, but if you are just getting old and otherwise healthy, then use it or lose it is pretty sound advice.
Source? A quick google search indicates different info.
Not if you are healthy.
Spoken like someone who's never lived in a prime snowbelt region.
They don't shovel snow, they use snowblowers.
Adults at least. Somehow my friends and I played basketball all day. Youth is something else.
A whole new level of alienation from nature... I'd go insane in a month
Is there evidence of migration from Phoenix by people who moved there on account of the heat?
Like the Gulf, most of Phoenix—certainly the neighbourhoods someone out of state would be moving to—is air conditioned to a fault. Solar power is plentiful and cheap. Hell, there are tanning salons everywhere because people avoid the sun in the summer.
He worked during the day, and said coming home and sitting around his pool in the evening was wonderful.
don't know if that's true with this heat wave?