Alia Gunnell used to get away with sleeping in until 8 a.m. before heading to properties across Marfa, where she runs a landscaping company. But last June, when average daily temperatures were some of the hottest on record across Texas, Gunnell started to feel especially irritable after days of spent fertilizing and watering plants in the heat. Now she starts her workday at 6 a.m. so she and her employees can get indoors by mid-afternoon when temperatures spike. She says she and her husband, Jason, come home and lie together, in silence, on their home’s cool concrete floor. “Otherwise it just feels like your brain is cooking all day,” Gunnell told me recently.
This year, the heat dome—a high-pressure system that traps warmth in the atmosphere—arrived in the Southwest earlier than usual, bringing summer temperatures about three weeks ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, there wasn’t much rainfall in South and West Texas to mitigate heat. As a result, this May was the sixth hottest in state history, according to John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist. The deep South Texas town of La Puerta, recorded the hottest ever May Texas temperature: 116 degrees Fahrenheit on May 9. Record highs were also recorded in Texas the following month: on June 4, parts of San Angelo reached 111 degrees Fahrenheit; in Del Rio, temperatures peaked at 109 degrees Fahrenheit that same day. And San Antonio recently recorded its highest heat index ever—117 degrees—surpassing last year’s then-record high. “Without some unusual weather,” said Nielsen-Gammon, “everything is in place to have a hotter-than-normal summer.”
Nielsen-Gammon forecasts that the temperatures for July through September will be between half a degree and one degree Fahrenheit warmer than average. In the eastern half of the state, in particular, the weather is going to be “unusually humid” because sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are at record highs. Future rain storms could mitigate extreme temperatures, but atmospheric scientists have predicted hotter summers like this one for quite some time, in part because of climate change. According to Neilsen-Gammon, temperatures have risen by about half a degree Fahrenheit per decade for the past half century.
For some Texans, though, temperatures may not feel extreme yet. Don’t get too excited: the smoky haze that has hung over much of South and Central Texas for weeks, feeling like a shady reprieve, is actually from sugarcane growers in the Yucatán burning their old crops to replenish their soil with nutrients. Most years these clouds dissipate by May, but the humidity has played a role in trapping them here longer. The haze doesn’t provide cover from ultraviolet rays, and experts still warn against staying outside for too long, especially in the middle of the day. They also encourage hydrating and wearing sunscreen and light clothing.
“I try to be on the conservative side with my energy output,” Killian Keller, who runs a small-scale farm in Lockhart, thirty miles southeast of Austin, told me last week. It was only 9 a.m., and Keller said he was already soaked in sweat. “It’s not worth it to hurt yourself out here.” Paraphrasing a popular meme from The Simpsons that’s circulated on the internet for years now, Keller lamented, “This is most likely the coolest summer of the rest of my life.”
Newcomers, meanwhile, have wondered whether they made the right choice in uprooting their lives to come to the Lone Star State. Tanny Martin, a 68-year-old with a disability said she moved from the East Coast to Austin to be closer to her son. She said the heat has been the biggest adjustment. “It’s a barrier to getting exercise and makes my chronic pain worse. It’s also isolating because I dread leaving my apartment,” she said. “I like Austin a lot, and love being near my son, but I miss the ocean breezes and even a good snow.”
Gunnell, meanwhile,is closely monitoring the temperatures each week. On the June morning we spoke, the Marfa temperature was expected to reach 88 degrees; two days later, the high was 97 degrees. Moving into July and August, Gunnell guessed that her days would likely start and end earlier, especially as the state reaches triple-digit temperatures. “For me, I’m okay with the heat if it’s under one hundred,” Gunnell said. “I’m just really, really hoping it rains.” She paused. “Otherwise, I may move.”
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