Do Summers Actually Get THAT Hot In Austin Texas?? Thoughts From A Local…

I’m not a meteorologist, so if you’re looking for data and graphs and all of that official stuff, look on a weather site. 

But I think that stuff isn’t as helpful as talking to someone who has actually lived in Austin most of her life and lived through these summers. 

So, here’s exactly what an Austin summer feels like, in case you’re thinking of moving here and wondering if you can handle the Austin heat. 

April: it starts getting humid (lots of rain!) and we might get a few days in the 90s…which always makes us local Austinites start thinking, “Too soon! Too soon!”

May: May feels like the start of summer. This is what I call “bearable heat” because it’s typically in the mid-90s (we might start hitting 100 degrees), but it cools down a bit at night. This means that if you want to go on a run at 6 am, you can do it and the pavement won’t be scalding and you can actually breathe a bit. It’s hot enough to swim, rent a boat and go out on the lake, and hit up all those awesome Austin swimming holes. But it’s also cool enough to enjoy patio weather in the evenings (with lots of mosquito repellent!), go running in the morning and actually enjoy it, and maybe ride bikes in the afternoon with the kids on those rare cooler days in May. 

June: June is still “bearable heat.” It’s always weird when we get the “first official day of summer” on June 20 because by then we’ve been living in summer weather for about 3 months already. And we still have a long way to go…

July/August/September: I’m just going to be honest: these three months are pretty brutal. And as a woman who has a home with air conditioning and works an indoor desk job, it’s annoying but do-able. But to all of the folks who work outdoors (lawn maintenance, roof repair/replacement, car washers, etc. etc. etc.), these months are absolutely devastating. 

And, quite frankly, it’s been heartbreaking to watch climate change make it nearly impossible for an entire group of workers to even do their job. A lot of people who work in construction/roofing will literally have to take entire weeks off of the year now (and not making any money during that time) because the weather gets too hot. 

July, August, and September are just the “put your head down and get through it” months. More and more Austinites are escaping the city in late July and early August because we all know these months are really, really long. 

(For reference, for all of you who live in cold states: I lived in Chicago for a stretch, and July-September for us here in Austin are the equivalent of March-May in cold weather states. You know when you’re already 3 months into winter, you still have 3 months to go, and everyone is going “is it EVER going to stop being cold and windy and miserable??” That’s what Austin summers feel like.)

School starts back in mid-August, and teachers will often have students go outside early in the morning and avoid the afternoon heat. 

A lot of outdoor workers will work in the morning and avoid the hottest part of the day. Quite simply because it’s just not safe to work on a hot roof that reads 150 degrees to the touch. 

Football fields in Texas with synthetic turf measure temperatures of 140+ degrees when football season starts. 

If you try to go swimming, it’s too hot to be in the sun. You have to swim in the mornings and stay in the shade, and then go inside from 1 - 6 pm. 

Basically, it’s HOT. And it stays hot through the end of September. 

October: this is when everyone expects it to cool off, and we might get some cool days. But the first half of October can still be in the upper 90s during the afternoons.