Hot Time in Texas

Summer in Texas is hot. Really hot. Dallas is hot and humid. Not as humid as Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia, but humid enough that 97 degrees feels like 110. And that’s what it has been for the last ten days.

When I went to bed at 11 p.m. last night, the temperature outside was still 92 degrees. Thank God for air-conditioning!

In New Mexico I learned that “It is not the heat, it’s the humidity,” is true. It is moisture in the air that holds the heat or cold. In the dry air of New Mexico, after sundown the air cools quickly. In summer in Albuquerque, I would run the “swamp cooler” (air-conditioning) in the heat of the afternoon. After the sun set, I opened the windows and slept every night under a blanket.

Albuquerque is high desert. In that clean, clear air the sun beats down out of a blue, blue sky. In August the high might go to 90 degrees. In the 20 years I lived there, it went to 100 only a couple of times. Still, 90 is hot. But step into the shade of my patio, and it was always cool.

Altitude also affects temperature. For every 1,000 feet you go up, the temperature goes down 3 degrees. My house in Albuquerque was on the 5,200 foot mesa – a mile high, like Denver.

From my patio I could see Sandia Mountain, 10,700 feet high. My son David came to visit one Easter. On a beautiful, warm spring day we drove to the mountain. At the top it was so cold that the winter snow had not melted. David got out of the car and made snow balls.

I miss New Mexico.

Last week my brother and his wife went with friends to vacation in Colorado. After one day in Lake City, altitude 8,500 feet, Don could not breathe. He saw a doctor. His oxygen level was 39. The doctor said, “Your lungs can’t take this altitude. You better go home.”

After their aborted vacation, Don and Mary are safely home in Dallas, altitude 500 feet. He feels fine. He says, “I’m never going back to the mountains. I’m never going to Albuquerque again!”

Different strokes for different folks. Wouldn’t it be a dull World is we were all the same?