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Not used to humidity … just expecting it

My introduction to Texas’s fascinating climate came in the spring of 1984, when I moved to Beaumont to take a job at the Beaumont Enterprise newspaper.

It took no time at all for the seasonal humidity to settle in. I informed my wife of that in a phone call to her in Oregon, where she stayed behind for a time to sell our house. To be candid, once we went through a summer or two of Gulf Coast heat/humidity, we all — our sons included — learned to expect the stifling temperature and the energy-sapping humidity. None of us ever got used to it.

Then we moved to Amarillo in 1995. The weather in the Panhandle was as unpredicatable in the spring as the Gulf Coast. It also was more temperate. Cooler in the morning and evening. The elevation of Amarillo, at 3,676 feet above sea level, had something to do with it. Much more pleasant. During the summer days? Still damn hot! But, hey … it was a dry heat, y’know?

Then we moved to Princeton in 2019. More humid again. Not like the coast, but stickier than the Panhandle.

My mantra now is as it was when I first got here 41 years ago. I have learned only to expect the humidity. I don’t like it, but as my dear old Dad would tell me when I bitched as a boy about the rain in Portland: Go talk to God!

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Happy Trails, Part 162: Back to ‘hot and humid’

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My wife and I are still in the midst of a wonderful journey through life. Nearly 48 years of marriage have taken us from Portland, Ore., to Beaumont, Texas, to Amarillo, Texas, and now to Princeton, Texas.

We’ve traveled a good bit, seen all but three of our United States and a good bit of the rest of the world.

Our final stop in Princeton, though, is reacquainting us with an aspect of our journey that we didn’t experience in our previous stop.

Humid heat is back in our lives.

We ventured from Portland to Beaumont in 1984, where we learned all about humidity; although I did live for a time in some sticky weather in Vietnam back in the day … but I digress. Take my word for it: You haven’t lived until you’ve gone through a Texas Gulf Coast summer with its requisite stifling heat and equally stifling humidity. I can speak only for myself, so I will: I did not ever totally embrace the humidity down yonder; I merely learned to expect it.

Then we ventured to the Texas Panhandle in early 1995. We spent 23 years there. The heat was the same as it was in the Golden Triangle. The humidity, though, was vastly different. Which is to say it’s the hackneyed “dry heat.” We broke an all-time record in Amarillo one summer when the temperature hit 111 degrees. But when the sun set at the end of that day, the temperature — as it does normally — fell to comfortable levels.

We grew quite used to that sort of high-altitude heat, given that Amarillo is perched atop the Caprock at nearly 3,700 feet above sea level.

Oh, but now it’s different.

We’ve migrated back to the “more humid zone” in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. It’s been blazing hot the past few days. Many more of those days are coming along this summer. And you can bet your sweaty armpits, the humidity has been brutal.

Has it been as rough as it is on the Gulf Coast? Hah! Nope. It is humid enough for me to gripe about it from time to time.

I’ve already boasted about my adaptability. I won’t belabor that point. I do plan to adapt to this new/old climate in Princeton. Hey, we lived in the Golden Triangle, for criminy sakes! This final stint — for the duration — ought to be a piece of cake.