Chasing 70 degrees

Chasing 70 degrees – I don’t know who coined the term “Chasing 70 degrees,” but it accurately describes where we want to go and when we want to be there. The phrase “chasing 70 degrees” refers to the average temperature. The earliest reference to the phrase I could find was in 2009, more than ten years ago. A complete website was dedicated to the phrase in 2014. One of my friends wrote an article on the subject in 2018. Hebard’s Travels

I bet full-time RVers used the phrase “Chasing 70 degrees” decades before that. It’s a little cooler at night and a little warmer in the day—not too hot, not too cold—just like a potted plant.

Chasing 70 degrees – How we pick where to be

Temperature is probably the number one overruling criterion. RVs (nearly all RVs) are just not built to handle all temperatures. We have some friends that camp in RVs in the snow in the winter, but it is not for us. Not when alternatives exist and are so available. The second criterion is that we don’t want to sit in one spot. We are travelers — even though we are slow travelers. We don’t race across the country multiple times per year. We have still not made it out of the West in three years.

Elevation

Elevation has much to do with temperature, both in the summer and winter. Even though the elevation change is small, Death Valley (below sea level) is lower and hotter than Yuma. Yuma is nearly at sea level. Las Vegas is almost two thousand feet above Yuma and almost a thousand feet above Phoenix. Saint George is three thousand feet above Yuma. So, in terms of summer and winter heat, the order is Death Valley, Yuma, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Saint George. All are blazing hot in the summer and warm in the winter — but the order remains the same.

Lapse Rate

The scientific term is Lapse Rate, and it is averaged at 3.5 degrees per thousand feet. So if you were to start at sea level at 90 degrees, then Phoenix would be expected to be 86 degrees, Las Vegas would be expected to be 83 degrees, and Saint George would be expected to be 79 degrees. Of course, the temperature is highly affected by the neighborhood, so you can’t perfectly predict temperature by elevation alone.

Neighborhood

To make things even more confusing, your temperature is directly related to the neighborhood. In this list, Las Vegas is closest to Death Valley. Death Valley significantly influences the temperature in Las Vegas, especially since the dominant airflow is from northwest to southeast.

I don’t think that this is a surprise to anyone. The entire southeast of the country is both hot and humid all summer. Southwest, as a whole, is extremely hot and dry (except for thunderstorms) all summer. Yet there are exceptions; the Atlantic Ocean makes the eastern seaboard much warmer in the winter than expected. This is due to the moderating influence of the warm water flowing northward along the coast.

Pressure

This heat, which is not evenly distributed, typically creates a high-pressure area that sits over the Mojave/ Sonoran Desert for most of the year. Weaker cold fronts, which could bring cooler temperatures to the region, break down and heat up before they can decrease temperatures. It takes a strong cold front, like the bomb cyclone of 2019, to really get the temperatures to drop. During the bomb cyclone, we had six inches of snow south of Tombstone. This was a real surprise. Only Yuma was safe from this “winter hurricane.”

Latitude

When avoiding the heat, the elevation is more important than latitude (how far north or south you are). We plan to go north and up in the summer and both lower elevation and south in the winter. We are not alone. Plenty of snowbirds have this figured out. Lake Superior is much colder than the same elevation in Alabama, all due to being further north. Virginia is at the same latitude as Colorado; both get snow. In December, Virginia is nearly 30 degrees warmer than the Colorado mountains, and most of this is because of elevation.

Greener Grass

Our planning to chase 70 degrees is mostly based on historical data. Of course, where we want to go is mostly based on temperature. We want to go to new places, but we mostly want to go to new nice places—when they are nice.

It is not hard to pick a location in May for nice weather. All you have to do is avoid the same attractive locations in January. Avoid southern Arizona, south Texas, and south Florida; they are all hot starting in May. We departed Las Vegas on the first 100-degree day of the year, April 28th.

The Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho mountains are all on the cool side in May. In 2019, we waited to cross into eastern Colorado until the first of May. Two weeks later, we had a threat of snow in Colorado Springs. One week later, we visited the mountains near Rocky Mountain National Park. The mountain range there is “The Never Summer Range.” It can and will snow frequently in mid-July.

Chasing 70 degrees — Tools

The number one tool I use to determine a location based on temperature is based on climate data collected over the last thirty years. The website is here: Climate. Use the slider bars to change the month, and you get a lovely picture to examine which locations you should expect to find us each month.

On this website, you can predict Temperatures or Storms

Temperature: Where will it be hot in August? Everywhere, except perhaps in southwest Colorado or northwest Wyoming. Or, better said, it won’t be as hot in southwest Colorado. In Texas, there is no escaping the heat—except to go to Colorado. Remember that the temperature chart does not include humidity, which increases the misery in the southeast.

How about warm in the winter? In January the three warmest places in the nation are in southern Arizona, south Texas, and south Florida.

Storms

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasts, you guessed it, hurricane activity. One time I plotted historic hurricane paths across Florida guessing that northern Florida was safe (it was only less risky). This picture breaks down the frequency by county. Notice that Miami and New Orleans have the same frequency of hurricanes. Off the map to the north, you would see that the coastline in Maine has the same frequency of tropical storms as Jacksonville. Frequency and intensity are also not the same things. Tropical Storms in Maine are not like tropical storms in Miami.

Based on hurricanes, you probably wouldn’t expect to find us in either Miami or New Orleans in the fall. However, spring is a real possibility. Summer is too hot, and again, you don’t want to be in the south in the summer, too hot and too much humidity.

Hurricanes are not the only storms you might want to avoid. This map makes an excellent argument for avoiding Kansas and Oklahoma in June.

Earthquakes

Earthquakes are off the subject now, but we might as well cover them. Unlike the weather, earthquakes happen without notice, typically in the west. There is not an earthquake season. Even if you are not as affected by earthquakes as in a fixed structure, we have some built-in advantages to soak up the tremor: tires, springs, and shock absorbers would help.

We are not immune to earthquake damage; we have leveling supports that lift the RV on hydraulic jacks when we park. An earthquake could easily damage these jacks. Since you can’t predict an earthquake, it is not like we could lift the jacks in preparation for the big one. The biggest problem with earthquakes is that they ruin the neighborhood.

Chasing 70 degrees — Planning

We now have ten articles on the subject of planning and perhaps this should have been the first. Chasing 70 degrees is a big deal for us. The other articles have more details about nuts and bolts. Here is a link to all the posts in the planning series: Planning

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