Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
Phoenix is hotter than Tucson for sure (lower elevation).
This thread’s criterion is average daily temp, though. Which means that desert cities that are furnaces during the day could rank “cooler” due to their nights than low-elevation high-humidity cities like those in the Lower RGV of Texas.
(I am not looking them up so just guessing.)
Another deduction: Since San Antonio appeared already, surely Austin isn’t far behind.
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Well, the hottest city is either Austin or Vegas, on the basis of the 1.5 million urban area comment from before. I definitely had the daily mean temp measurement and how that interacts with humidity in my mind when I wrote my comment, as well as the fact that San Antonio just appeared a few comments ago.
I wasn’t aware Tucson was at a higher elevation, so that’s an easy switch.
San Antonio is also at a higher elevation than Austin and lacks the humidity driver of a major river, and the same goes for Austin vis-a-vis Dallas: Dallas is generally at a lower elevation and the Trinity is much larger and more meandering than the Colorado (although the highland lake system may counteract this).
Houston has already appeared, likely due to cool ocean currents that none of the other cities lack.
Whereas El Paso is dry and benefits from cool evenings and nights, McAllen is far enough away from the ocean to not get the benefit of the cool ocean currents either, and although it is technically in a semi-arid climate, its summers are long, hot, humid and unforgiving.
I just cannot imagine any reality where McAllen is not the hottest city in Texas.
Which leaves Las Vegas as the hottest city in the United States.