This week, we’ve been having what the locals are calling “false fall.” The overnight lows have been in the 40s (some areas in the mountains have had freezes) and the afternoon highs have been in the low 70s. It’s the kind of weather we might get in late October in Texas, if we had a cold front. I’ve been loving it because this is one of my favorite kinds of weather. I can sit outside comfortably all day (though I need a jacket in the morning), hot tea feels good, and I can sleep under blankets without getting too hot. We’re even getting the first fall color. It’s just individual leaves turning red and gold, but it’s a hint of what’s to come.

It’s been even nicer when I see that it’s been in the 100s, with heat advisories, where I used to live. Apparently, that’s all due to the same weather pattern that’s blocking air from the north away from Texas and bringing it to us.

Alas, starting this weekend it’s warming up again. The locals are talking about going back to summer and “Satan’s armpit,” but even so, it’s still late September and early October weather for Texas, so it will still feel a bit like fall. to me I might not want to go for long walks at the hottest part of the day, but I also won’t need a heated throw and a jacket to eat breakfast on the back porch in the morning.

This is a big reason why I wanted to move. No 100s here. It is really muggy during the summer, which is weird because the temperatures are lower and the dew points are about where they were in Texas, but it feels a lot more humid. I went to hear the local TV meteorologist do a talk at the library and asked her about it. She said it may be that the layer of humid air is deeper here, and it may be that there’s less wind. The wind really may be it. I hadn’t realized how still it is here compared to Texas. A normal day in Texas had steady winds of about 10 mph. Here, that’s a pretty gusty day. Most days we may get a gentle breeze, at best. When the air doesn’t move, it feels a lot more humid, which makes it feel hotter. I’ve had to set my air conditioner a lot lower than I kept it in Texas just to take some of the humidity out of the air. My internal thermometer is still a bit off. I’ll look at the temperature on my weather station that has a sensor on my porch, and I’ll think I need to put on a sweater to go walking, then get started walking and immediately have to take it off. It always seems to feel warmer than I expect it to.

And this is one reason it was a good idea to wait until I’ve lived here a while before I make any decisions about buying a house. On paper, I might have said I wouldn’t need air conditioning here because it almost never gets to the temperature at which I turned on the air in Texas, but it does feel different here. I might be able to survive without AC if I had a whole-house dehumidifier (or one in each room), lots of ceiling fans, an attic fan, and no strong direct sun exposure, but it would definitely take the dehumidifier and fans. It does get cooler and drier at night. My AC never comes on at night, and I’m comfortable sleeping under blankets with an oscillating fan aimed at the bed (no ceiling fans in the apartment). I only need the AC for a few hours a day, and it’s a bit cooler than I’d like it to be, but the humidity is bad if I set the AC at a temperature that doesn’t require a sweater.

Now I’ll have to see what winter’s like. Statistics are showing that winters here are warming up more than the summers are, so the winters are getting milder faster than the summers are getting worse. When I was looking for a place to move, I was looking for a Goldilocks zone where it was just right, where I could get four seasons and less miserable summers without horrible winters. I’m excited about fall because that’s my favorite season and everyone is telling me it’s glorious here. I need to hurry and get a lot of writing done before it hits so I can take some time off to be outside as much as possible.