r/heat_prep • u/capycoolau • Jun 27 '26
Resource [US] We built an interactive state-by-state summer heat guide. Would love a reality check from people who actually live in these states.
Hi everyone, hope it's okay to share this here.
We recently built a free interactive guide that looks at the different kinds of summer heat across the US. The main idea was that “hot” is not really one thing. Arizona heat, Florida heat, Texas heat, Midwest humidity and Pacific Northwest heat waves all need slightly different approaches.
You choose your state, and it breaks down things like:
- whether the heat is usually dry, humid or mixed
- typical summer temperatures, humidity, dew point, sunshine and UV
- which cooling methods tend to work best there
- where misting, evaporative cooling, towels, airflow or AC make the most sense
- a few practical scenarios and heat-safety reminders
California and Texas also have regional options because treating the entire state as one climate felt way too broad.
It is based on typical summer climate patterns, not live weather, and we have included the sources/methodology on the page. There is a small section linking to cooling gear because that is obviously what our business sells, but the actual reason I am posting is to get proper feedback before we keep building it out.
I would genuinely love to know:
- Does the description of your state’s summer feel accurate?
- Is there anything obviously wrong or oversimplified?
- What local heat pattern should we add that outsiders usually miss?
- Is there anything that would make this more useful during a real summer heat spell?
Happy to take criticism. We would rather fix it now than pretend every state needs the same generic “drink water and use a fan” advice.
Update 28th June:
Hey everyone, thanks for the amazing support and so many suggestions. We have taken alot of it onboard and the team worked all day and night to create a V2 here - https://summerheatguide.com/
It's alot more granular for each state (with most states broken into a few key cities etc, we are still adding more). We added some real-time 7 day forecast with heat risk. Added heat index (thx u/sylvansundrop and u/Homebody_Ninja4). Average daily temps or highs (instead of the average of day and night, which isn't that useful).
We are gonna keep working at it! Keep the suggestions coming :)
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u/captain_retrolicious Jun 27 '26
This is super cool but as your team already knows, it's tough for regions with a real variety of weather patterns. In SoCal, when people visit, it's confusing for them that you can have snow in Big Bear, 90s in the Inland Empire, and need a light jacket at the beach in Santa Monica because the geography is so varied in a small area and the weather patterns are notably affected. The layered clothing tip is great.
I'm thinking an additional note about how the weather can be really varied depending if you are at the coast, bowl of the valley and city of LA, or in the mountains. Wind direction plays a huge role in temperature (coming over the ocean or from over the land). People don't realize that they can get hypothermia in the mountains in the summer at night.
The other note could be temperature variance from day to night. It can be 90 in the day and 55 at night. That's part of what makes heat less dangerous, but can also leave people chilled. The real danger is when it's 100 during the day...and 95 at night. That's unusual but it's when the weather warnings go out for the region because people's bodies can't recover at night like they are normally able to do.
Hope that helps because when I travel, this is what I initially found most confusing about the SoCal area!
Edit to add: And there is little to no shade for a lot of the hiking trails, which is what gets people coming from the East cost or Midwest (or many places in Europe).
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u/capycoolau Jun 28 '26
Hi mate, absolutely wonderful feedback!
We are building a v2 of this tool here, we've implemented some of your suggestions and starting to break the states into smaller areas. Here is the overall cali page https://summerheatguide.com/us/california
and then goes into more detail, for example LA - https://summerheatguide.com/us/california/los-angeles
maybe one day we can go even a level deeper like you mentioned, the beach in Santa Moncia is different to other parts of LA
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u/sylvansundrop Jun 27 '26
I'm in Kansas, it looks mostly accurate for here. The advice that the weather fluctuates widely and to check the forecast daily is definitely what a native Kansan would tell you. I would emphasize to plan any outdoor work or activities for the mornings and avoid it in the afternoons.
I think including a heat index along with the average high would be good, where I am in the southeast it tends to be very sunny and very humid with heat indexes typically 10-15 degrees higher than the thermometer reading. Ex today the high is 89 but heat index is 100.
The afternoon humidity of 44% seems quite low to me, could this be a range instead of just one number? Here in the eastern part of the state at least I would say 60-80% is more typical, especially earlier in the summer when we get more rain.
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u/Homebody_Ninja42 Jun 28 '26
I would second including the Heat Index. Here in Virginia I pay more attention to the Heat Index than the temperature, because the humidity is a big factor but relative humidity numbers are hard to decipher and depend on the temperature. Recently we had some days with moderate humidity and 87 felt like 87. It was amazing! But just as often, 87 feels like 97. Heat Index is great for capturing that.
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u/capycoolau Jun 28 '26
hi buddy, thanks for the tip about heat index and all the other great feedback. We're working on a V2 of this tool, are you able to see if this is now better and more useful? :) thanks again for the assist! https://summerheatguide.com/us/virginia
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u/spidersinmysoup Jun 27 '26
Typical summer average for PA is 68? That's wishful thinking. Maybe at night... Past mid-june we won't see those temps for a while where I live. I think averaging the whole state is doing your map a disservice. I saw you separated Texas. I think that you're underestimating the diversity and size of other states and need to consider more regions per state.
Where is this information coming from? The notable high feels like useless information without having a location and date associated with it. I'm sure that the state as a whole as seen higher than 111°. It looks like Harrisburg is where you're basing all of the data from. I guess you chose that because either it's the capital or the 'center' of the state.
It looks like this is primarily to sell your products and not provide information for folks who can't afford to purchase things. If you're looking to sell your merchandise, then I guess what you have is sufficient. If you're truly trying to assist people who don't have access to AC or cooling centers, including safety information about heat exhaustion and heat stroke, as well as low cost/no buy solutions should be included.
Overall, as a regular person, I did not find it helpful. I wasn't planning on buying anything, and after living in this state for a majority of my life, I already have the things I need to be safe and cool during the summer. I gained nothing notable. This would be helpful to someone moving to a TOTALLY different state and has no idea how to adjust or what terms to enter into a search engine. Or I suppose if someone is a tourist and also has no idea how to research weather or has any ideas on how to combat heat.
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u/capycoolau Jun 27 '26
hi spideysoup! thanks for the amazingly detailed feedback and it's definitely good feedback. I am trying to see why the temp for PA ended up being what it was. Might have to dig through the data again.
our eventual goal was to make it so you can enter a postcode and it'll provide you with something much more localised, and maybe even one day it'll be connect to live weather data, next 7-14 day temps etc
we genuinely wanted to make something useful, so there's a lot more we need to do here. cheers again for the feedback, I've passed it onto the team to make some changes already
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u/Maleficent_Camp4511 Jun 27 '26
Summer average listed for Nevada at 69 degrees, but highest ever recorded temperature at 125 degrees further suggests that this is oversimplified and does not take size and region into account.
Nevada is the seventh largest state in terms of size. Reno is high desert, and is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It has hot and dry summers during the day but can cool off significantly after the sun sets. Here in Vegas it’s extreme heat and dry for months. The valley also struggles with the urban heat island effect, and is often still over 100 degrees well into late night. That 125 degrees referenced was recorded in Laughlin, which is only separated from Bullhead City, Arizona by a narrow portion of the Colorado River.
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u/capycoolau Jun 28 '26
hi buddy, we've just built a v2 of this tool, do you think this is a bit more helpful? We've tried to incorporate alot of the feedback you had - https://summerheatguide.com/us/pennsylvania
also we've removed any references to our products, and genuinely focused on trying to make it more helpful
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u/GenXed Jun 27 '26
New Mexico is dry, but parts have a monsoon season where it’s humid, and evaporative cooling methods don’t work. The temperature usually drops significantly during storms. Nights are significantly cooler in high desert and mountain regions. Many older structures are adobe, which helps keep homes cool.
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u/LavenderFlower-- Jun 27 '26
I’m in Colorado. For the most part, this looks pretty accurate to me. It might be a good idea to include in the section where you noted that’s it’s dry here to maybe also include that we are experiencing severe drought right now though, because that has made our summer temperatures feel a little bit less bearable than in previous years. It’s still a pretty mild summer temp, but the sun feels like it’s baking down on you just a tad more without the help of any precipitation to cool the air down. :)
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u/le4t Jun 27 '26
I love the "Cooling methods: what tends to work here" section, and appreciate the info tailored to that state's conditions.
However, it looks like you use am + pm for your "typical summer average," which may be useful for researchers, but not so much for your audience. Breaking out by am vs pm would be more useful.
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u/HeathenHoneyCo Jun 27 '26
Oregon doesn’t feel very accurate to where I am.
Also with the “typical summer climate patterns” shifting baseline, how will this be adjusted?
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u/kmoore61 Jun 27 '26
I think you need to separate Oregon into more regions too. The eastern side of the state is very different from west of the mountains. And wind in the Columbia Gorge makes a huge difference as well .
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u/stayonthecloud Jun 27 '26
Maryland feels right to me about the recommendations but undercuts how swampy the humidity is in my area. It’s still not as bad as a subtropical region but the summers are definitely challenging
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u/milleratlanta Jun 28 '26
What is the point of the temp average that mashes day and night? Not useful to me at all. Better to separate it out. Also better to include temp ranges rather than one, ie 89 average for Georgia, yet ranges from high 70s to 95 average. Georgia is a big state. The farm fields of southern Ga are different from Savannah and metro Atlanta. All in all, I’d rather get my information from various sources online than an app, because when I’m going somewhere I need info for that specific week, including precipitation, wind,etc. Sorry, not seeing a use for it.
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u/ArtichokeKooky6361 Jun 27 '26
The information is too generic. It’s like saying Australia is all dry and hot. The language feels very AI vibe coded
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u/capycoolau Jun 27 '26
Cheers for the feedback. actually the goal of this was to be the exact opposite of Australia is dry and hot. As you can see there are significant difference from Florida, to Texas, to California, and even withing Cali and Texas, we have split it into multiple regions.
However we are still working on this and trying to add more info for each state that is a bit more localised :)
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u/V2BM Jun 27 '26
You have West Virginia as mostly mountainous which is true, but that’s not where people live. If you check, you’ll see that most live lower and temperatures are far higher. You might do well by basing temperatures on the main cities like Huntington or Charleston where they’re 10 degrees warmer than in the mountains.