Where Texas Stays Hottest After Dark

Hot Texas summers are usually defined by soaring afternoon temperatures, but this year, the nights were often just as intense. As a late-August heat dome settled over the state, forecasters warned that record-warm overnight lows could outnumber record daytime highs, leaving homes with little chance to cool down. When temperatures stay high after dark, air conditioners have to keep working, quietly adding to the cost of a Texas summer.

Payless Power analyzed NOAA overnight-low records for 12 Texas metros to see how many nights each city stayed at or above 75 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit this year, how that compares with the mid-1990s, and what the extra heat adds to a home’s cooling costs. The dollar figures are modeled estimates rather than measured bills, but the pattern is hard to miss. The nights are getting hotter, and cooling through them is not cheap.

Key Takeaways

• Houston’s hot nights have surged, with 2.5 times as many 75°+ nights in 2026 as the city averaged in the mid-1990s.
• McAllen leads Texas with 52 nights that never dropped below 80°F this year.
• McAllen endured 63 straight nights above 75°F this year, the longest no-relief streak in the state.
• An 80°F night costs about twice as much to cool as a 75°F night, adding roughly $48 over a full month.
• McAllen homeowners have paid an estimated $176 more this summer just to keep their homes cool overnight.

Where Texas Nights Refuse to Cool Off

The daytime high grabs the headlines, but across 12 metros, the overnight low is climbing, and in 2026, it added up fast.

Here’s what the overnight numbers showed:

• McAllen recorded the most warm nights of any metro, 112 nights at or above 75°F through late August, ahead of Laredo at 93 and Corpus Christi at 79.
• Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and El Paso have each logged more nights above 75 degrees in this partial year than in any single full year of the mid-1990s.
• Dallas-Fort Worth saw the state’s longest unbroken stretch of 80-degree nights, 12 in a row.
• Laredo and San Antonio had long no-relief runs of their own, going 43 and 32 straight nights without a low below 75°F.
• Dallas-Fort Worth’s overnight lows have risen more than two and a half times as fast as its afternoon highs since the mid-1990s.
• The Panhandle stayed coolest after dark, with Amarillo logging just 9 nights above 75 degrees and Lubbock 20.

The overnight warm-up shows up almost everywhere. Here’s how fast summer nights have warmed per decade in each metro with a reliable trend, and roughly how much hotter that makes them now than in the mid-1990s:

• Houston, about 1.1°F per decade, roughly 3.2°F warmer
• McAllen, about 0.8°F per decade, roughly 2.4°F warmer
• El Paso, about 0.6°F per decade, roughly 1.7°F warmer
• Dallas-Fort Worth, about 0.5°F per decade, roughly 1.6°F warmer
• Lubbock, about 0.5°F per decade, roughly 1.5°F warmer
• Midland, San Antonio, and Austin, about 0.4°F per decade, roughly 1.2°F warmer each
• Amarillo, about 0.2°F per decade, roughly 0.6°F warmer
• Corpus Christi, about 0.1°F per decade, roughly 0.3°F warmerWhat a Night That Won’t Cool Down Costs

What a Night That Won’t Cool Down Costs

We also estimated how much hotter nights hit your wallet. The charts below break down the extra costs of keeping your home cool when the temperature refuses to drop.

Pairing the warm-night counts with a typical cooling load and the current Texas rate, the study modeled what those nights add up to:

• McAllen topped the state with an estimated $176 in added overnight cooling costs this summer, followed by Laredo at about $129 and Corpus Christi at about $118.
• An 80-degree night costs about twice as much to cool as a 75-degree night, and a full month of them adds about $48 in modeled overnight cooling.
• Houston’s warm nights carried an estimated $47 more in modeled overnight cooling this summer than in the mid-1990s, a rise of about 80%.
• El Paso and Midland saw the steepest increases among metros with a stable baseline, each running more than twice its mid-1990s modeled cost.
• Del Rio had the smallest increase among metros with a reliable baseline, about 10% above its mid-1990s level.
• Every degree a night fails to cool adds roughly 16 cents in modeled overnight cooling, so the cost climbs right along with the temperature.
• Even a single month of 80-degree nights would add more in modeled cooling than Amarillo has run up all season, roughly $16 in total.

Methodology

Nightly low and high temperatures (TMIN and TMAX) come from NOAA’s Global Historical Climatology Network daily (GHCNd) , one long-record station per metro across 12 Texas metros: Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, Corpus Christi, McAllen, Laredo, Midland, Del Rio, Lubbock, and Amarillo. Quality-flagged values were dropped. A warm night is a low at or above 75 degrees Fahrenheit, with a second threshold at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The 2026 counts (January 1 to August 23, year-to-date) are compared with a mid-1990s baseline, the 1994 to 1998 average through the same calendar day. Laredo lacks that baseline and is shown without a trend, Austin uses the continuous Camp Mabry station to avoid an airport siting change, and Amarillo and Lubbock are reported as absolute counts because their baselines are too small for a stable multiple.

Cost figures are modeled estimates associated with warm nights, not measured bills or their cause. Each is the degree-nights above a 70-degree reference, multiplied by a 3.5-kilowatt (roughly 3-ton) central air conditioner over an 8-hour night, at the Texas residential rate of $0.1644 per kilowatt-hour ( EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A , May 2026, pulled August 25, 2026). Costs vary by home, equipment, and rate.

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Fair Use Statement

The data, findings, and visuals contained in this study are free to share and republish for noncommercial purposes. Please provide a link back to Payless Power so readers can access the full research and methodology.