Tales of the Southwest: The Wind, The Heat, The Weather

            “So I bet you didn’t have wind like this when you were in Florida,” said a message from a Facebook friend the other day.

            A front was coming in from the north, winds were up around 35 miles per hour.

            I reckon my pal kinda-sorta forgot I’ve only been gone from the High Plains for two years.

            “I actually missed winds like this,” I wrote back.  “Love the dynamic, love it even better when it’s at my back when I’m riding a bicycle.”

            In eastern New Mexico and west Texas in the spring and fall the winds come.  I like to call them “light, refreshing breezes”….35 to 40 miles per hour carrying dust, debris, toupees, small animals and itty bitty young’uns off to parts unknown.  

            That’s the way it is here on the High Plains, a place of weather extremes:  windy periods or periods of hot air with no movement; drought or day after day of afternoon thunderstorms; the dry line to our west, the dry line to our east.

            You probably ought to admit, though, the weather extremes aren’t as bad as they are in some other places.

            Take the wind, for instance.

            I’ve heard folks who’ve come here from other parts of the country (usually in relation to the air base) speak of how the winds of eastern New Mexico drive them crazy.

            Friend, have you ever lived in Amarillo?

            When I first arrived in Amarillo in the fall of 1992 I noticed all the trees were bent to the northeast.  I supposed the winds blew from the southwest during the spring while the trees were growing.

            I was wrong.

            The wind blew all the damn time in Amarillo, mostly from the southwest.  My commuter vehicle was a Honda 150 scooter.  When I rode around on it in Roswell I got about 70 miles to the gallon.  In Amarillo, because I was riding into strong winds, I got only 50 miles to the gallon.  When I left the panhandle in the summer of ’93, I’m telling you, I had this weird buzzing in my head from the constant wind.

            After I left Amarillo and its wind behind, I saw an article in “USA Today” about the windiest places in America.  First place went to Dodge City, Kansas.  Second went to a weather station atop the Berkshires in western Massachusetts.

            Amarillo was rated as the third windiest place in the U. S.

            Does the High Plains summer heat bother you?

            Have you ever been to Phoenix?  

            Summer in Phoenix, Arizona is like living in a convection oven.  

            The great writer, Hunter S. Thompson, once said his idea of hell is "A viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix in the summer."

            Phoenix owes its size as a metropolitan area to air conditioning.  Without it, the area might’ve been as big as Las Cruces.  If you’re not acclimated to the summer heat of southern Arizona, when you leave a Southwest Airlines flight then head out the doors of Sky Harbor International Airport, it will take your breath away, suck it and all moisture right out of your lungs, you curl up and lay on the ground like a human raisin.  Okay, maybe it’s an exaggeration, but it will still stun you.

            I lived in Mesa, a suburb, and made a daily commute on my mighty scooter to downtown Phoenix.  Late fall, winter and early spring aren’t too bad in The Valley of the Sun.  By early May the daytime highs hit 100 and by August it could be 110, 114, 118 even 120.  Another astounding thing about Phoenix is to walk out of your place on a summer night at midnight and find the temperature is 100 degrees.  100 degrees at midnight, no sun!

            Forget this “but it’s a dry heat” stuff.

            It’s hot.

            I would take a spray bottle to work.  In the afternoon, before I went home, I’d spray myself down and get all wet.  The wet clothes helped keep me cool as I flew along on my scooter.  I was completely dry within 10 minutes.

            The heat was so maddening I got off work one afternoon and drove to the mountain town of Jerome, near Flagstaff.  I had to have a decent summer breeze, not one that peeled the skin off my arms and forehead.

            Some folks complain about the dust of Curry and Roosevelt counties.  Our dust pales in comparison to the dust blows of Roswell, Chaves county and the Pecos Valley.

            There’s humidity in the American South, snows that don’t melt until spring is well underway in the north central states, hurricanes on the east and Gulf coasts and the twisters of America’s “Tornado Alley.”

            Now think about it, is the weather really all that bad around here?

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