Sure, summers are hot in Dallas — there is no doubt about that — but compared to temperatures in other parts of the Lone Star State, Dallas summer weather might seem relatively “cool.”
Anthony Franze, a meteorologist with the San Antonio Express-News, decided to find out which cities in the state are the hottest. He looked at average high temperatures for the months of June, July, and August over the last 10 years for all areas of Texas.
Of the state’s six major cities with populations of 500,000 or more, Dallas ranked No.5 in terms of highest average summer temperatures. El Paso in far West Texas took the No.1 spot, averaging 97.6 degrees, followed by Austin, San Antonio, and Fort Worth.
Houston took the last spot, but Franze pointed out that the high humidity in the Gulf Coast city can make the summer heat there feel much hotter.
Dallas summers average about 95.2 degrees, according to Franze’s data chart.
However, all of these large Texas cities are still relatively cooler than other “hotspots” around the state. Laredo, near the southern border of Mexico, averages summer temperatures of 101.3 degrees, while McAllen, another border town southeast of Laredo, averages 99 degrees.
The No.1 hottest place in all of Texas, according to Franze’s research, is the unincorporated town of Rio Grande Village — population 12 — where summer high temperatures have averaged 105.4 degrees for the last decade.
This year, though, the temperatures in Rio Grande Village have been even hotter than usual, averaging 110.7 degrees so far. The town, located in Big Bend National Park, is in the midst of a more than two-month-long streak of triple-digit temperatures, which have reached as high as 119 degrees.
So, what is the hottest temperature ever recorded in Texas? Two towns share the record for highest temperature: Seymour, in North Texas, hit 120 degrees in June of 1994, tying the record set in Monahan in far West Texas in August of 1936.
Closer to home, the highest summer temperature ever recorded in the DFW area was 113 degrees on June 26 and 27, 1980, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
Sarah Barnes, with the NWS in Fort Worth, told The Dallas Express that the average high temperature experienced in the North Texas region this year was 99.8 degrees for the month of July, and the average temperature for August so far has been 104.5 degrees.
“We may end up breaking the record for hottest summer, which would be 1980, which had an average high temperature of 101.6, and then 2011 had an average high temperature of 101.2,” said Barnes. “Those are the two highest, and then the next highest was in the 99-degree range.”
