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Comment by bob1029 | Hacker News Reader

I recently moved to the more forested biome just north of Houston and the difference in the actual temperature is remarkable. The city core area inside 610 loop is sitting at 77F right now. My back porch is right at 68F. I am not even 60 miles away.

The hottest temperatures get to be about the same, but the trees don't hold heat like the concrete does. It falls off so much faster up here. It seems you can cool these houses with barely half the HVAC capacity that the other ones tend to require. Which is wild because the power grid up here is also much cheaper.

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Urban Heat Islands are far stronger than people generally realise.

I live in a forest. When it’s 28C here, it’ll be 36C in the village a few km away. It’ll drop to 16C overnight here but they have a low of 28C.

All that masonry, concrete, blacktop, the absence of shade, and you basically just have a great big passive thermal accumulator.

I would never expect the temperature 60 miles away to be anywhere close to mine. Is that normally the case in Texas?

Really? Assuming similar elevation, I'd expect the temperature of two points 60 miles apart on earth to average the same with fairly low standard deviation.

Is there something specific to your geography that leads you to assume the temperature 60 miles away wouldn't "be anywhere close to yours"?

In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the temperature commonly varies dramatically between some places which are a quarter mile apart. And one side of a hill can be persistently foggy while the other side is usually sunny.

Daly City never ceased to baffle me whenever I'd drive through from the valley to SF.

That is true but it's also an infamously unusual aspect of the Bay Area.

The whole region is relatively flat swampy area, so probably moreso than in more mountainous places. The soil and vegetation is quite varied though.

San Antonio and Austin are around 80 miles apart and have nearly identical climates. But they are both about the same distance from the coast, which is probably the main driver of climate in TX.

You sure? Thats the case for areas the size of entire states. You can look at any weather temperature map to prove this.

60 miles is the distance between downtown Seattle and the peak of Mt. Rainier. Downtown Tokyo to the peak of Mt. Fuji. The highest and lowest points in the contiguous US are Death Valley and Mt Whitney, only 80 miles apart, yes that's 20 more than 60 but you get the point here.

Even between places at roughly the same elevation, the climate can vary hugely within 60 miles of a coast. And a majority of the population of the US lives within 60 miles of a coast.

Plains vs mountains are way different biomes. In Texas you can drive 8 hours and maintain similar temps.

If they lived on a mountain, they probably wouldn't be attributing the weather difference to the urban heat island effect.

Its normal anywhere as long as you're not comparing coastal to non coastal, yes.

You can drive for an hour doing 70mph and still be within the Houston metro area.

When I lived near downtown Houston, during the summer, I had to change into my work clothes after I got to the office. Just the 100 yd walk, at 8 am, from my house to the bus stop, left me sweaty. The city definitely holds a lot of heat.

Fancy way of say The Woodlands?

The Mincraftification of language...

What's Minecraft got to do with it?

The Woodlands has become part of the concrete blob which is now in the process of assimilating Conroe and Willis. You need to go further north.

That’s crazy. I grew up in Houston in the 80s and Kingwood, the “new” Woodlands and Lake Conroe were their own distinct “far away” places.

I'd take the 10-20 extra degrees of heat if it meant living somewhere fun (Montrose 10 years ago or East Downtown today). The Woodlands is depressing.

MONTROSE has become less eclectic and fun. When Mary’s mural went away is approximately the down fall. Time marches on.

Yeah man that's why I said ten years ago lol

Urban heat island effect is a strong one!

Welcome to real Northern Living :)

>On a scorching Texas afternoon,

Something I'm very familiar with, and the drone data speaks for itself as far as what it's like in the hot sun of southeast Texas.

Then how about at night?

Those buildings can then act like heat islands that can take more than one night for the heat to dissipate too.

Some cool off that much, some don't. Thermodynamics at work.

Based on heated mass is how long it takes to cool back off to ambient temp by morning. Good air circulation can help a lot too.

If everybody's roof is soaking up heat all day, the structures underneath that are being actively cooled at the same time are not expected to have nearly as much heated mass that needs to dissipate, and the only time for that might be at night.

But maybe that same amount of heat was actively dispersed into the surrounding air all day by the air conditioning units of the cooled structures, plus some of the night. And how efficient are A/C units anyway? That's got to make a difference too so it's not just abandoned buildings but any time people are not running A/C even while dwelling there. At least the windows are open then.

So the drone data on the buildings looks realistic so far, but everything else is just beginning to trickle in.

Regardless, I'm just fine without A/C in the summer in Houston if I'm in a proper place like a 100-year-old home that was built for it.

But I grew up in Florida when about the only places with A/C were supermarkets and banks, not even most college dorms or classrooms had it when I got there.

You just sweat more in Florida, because it may not reach 100 Fahrenheit all summer but the humidity makes Houston feel like a desert by comparison, and it sure doesn't cool off as much at night like it does in Houston with its milder type of "Northern Living" :)

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