Austin, Texas

For the first 14 years of my life, I grew up in South Korea. My town was a big education focused city, and a lot of people around me had a broad knowledge of foreign (especially western) cultures, one thing that they never understood was the weather in Texas. I would like to use this blog space to show and explain the differences.

The Korean peninsula has four distinct seasons; if I have to compare, I would say it’s similar to New York City’s climate — hm, maybe a little milderd with the wind blowing from Siberia. Then Spring comes around and melts everything and new flowers and leaves bloom. Summer is hot and humid since the wind is blowing from the Pacific, and this is when we have monsoon. Lastly fall comes, and it colors the world in red, orange and yellow as it cools down the heat from the summer. The image on the left is something I found on Google that I thought shows the four seasons very well.

On the other hand, Texas has only two seasons: summer and winter. Most people think that it’s always hot and dry like what they see from one of those western movies with cowboys. That may be true for West Texas but not really for Central or East Texas. Summer in the two later regions is hot and humid. Because of the size of the state, the weather in Texas can be vastly different depending on the region. City like El Paso in West Texas is landlocked and located at high altitude, and the weather is dry and feels a bit cooler than other regions in Texas consequently. Where as, Houston is right on Gulf of Mexico which makes it green yet very humid.

Well, since this page is for Austin, I will only talk about Austin.

Weather data for Camp Mabry, Austin, Texas, USA
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °F (°C)	90 (32)	99 (37)	98 (37)	99 (37)	104 (40)	108 (42)	108 (42)	110 (43)	112 (44)	100 (38)	91 (33)	90 (32)	112 (44)
Average high °F (°C)	60 (16)	65 (18)	73 (23)	79 (26)	85 (29)	91 (33)	95 (35)	96 (36)	90 (32)	81 (27)	70 (21)	62 (17)	79 (26)
Average low °F (°C)	40 (4)	44 (7)	51 (11)	58 (14)	65 (18)	71 (22)	73 (23)	73 (23)	69 (21)	60 (16)	49 (9)	42 (6)	58 (14)
Record low °F (°C)	-2 (-19)	-1 (-18)	18 (-8)	30 (-1)	40 (4)	51 (11)	57 (14)	58 (14)	41 (5)	30 (-1)	20 (-7)	4 (-16)	-2 (-19)
Precipitation inches (mm)	1.89 (48)	1.99 (50.5)	2.14 (54.4)	2.51 (63.8)	5.03 (127.8)	3.81 (96.8)	1.97 (50)	2.31 (58.7)	2.91 (73.9)	3.97 (100.8)	2.68 (68.1)	2.44 (62)	33.6 (853.4)
Source: NOAA[23]
Source #2: weather.com[25]

Even though this chart says that the average high F is around 94, it’s been more like 101 in the past 3 years I’ve been here. Winter is more or less true.

Relative Humidity by Month (Percentage)
Morning
Jan.	Feb.	Mar.	Apr.	May.	Jun.	Jul.	Aug.	Sep.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.
78%	79%	79%	82%	88%	89%	87%	86%	85%	83%	82%	79%
Afternoon
62%	61%	58%	59%	63%	59%	54%	53%	58%	58%	61%	62%

And here is the humidity. I don’t know what’s a good humidity level, but I think I feel comfortable when it is 40-50%.

So adding those two together, you can somewhat predict how it is during the summer and winter. Winter is cold and dry.

Summer is sizzling hot. You won’t get sweaty right after taking a shower like Houston, but you will sweat for walking about 5 minutes outside. It’s not unbearable, but you don’t want to be outside around 2 pm. It’s harder to feel it though since we drive everywhere and hardly ever walk unless you are a student who has to walk to class or downtown business professionals who don’t have a designated parking spot near work.

Winter is cold too; not as much as the East Coast, but fairly cold. People think it’s warm during the winter because the winter season is pretty short (The real winter starts mid to end of December and ends around mid February). We don’t have to wrap ourselves with 10 layers of clothes (well, rarely we do), but a big thick leather jacket would be nice especially you are a night owl. Also, what will really get you is the sharp wind and the cold front from the North. I thought Wikipedia explained it well:

“For the entire year, Austin averages 88 days below 45 °F (7 °C) and 24 days when the minimum temperature falls below freezing. The lowest recorded temperature was −2 °F (−19 °C) on January 31, 1949.^[22] Snowfall is rare in Austin, but approximately biannually Austin may suffer an ice storm that freezes roads over and affects much of the city for 24 to 48 hours.”