I grew up in SoCal and CO and we never had AC but I don’t remember being uncomfortable. I moved to the South after AC so have never been uncomfortable here either. Spoiled a bit, I guess.

California’s Central Valley heat at its extremes – Red Bluff/Redding in the north and Fresno/Bakersfield in the south – are about 5 degrees hotter in summer days than the middle (Sacramento area). But the nights are much different near Sacramento. The delta that feeds San Francisco Bay is the area’s air conditioner. In the basic shape of a folding hand fan spreading into the center of the Central Valley, a cooling breeze – called the delta breeze – magically appears at around 7-8 pm in summer, cooling things down.

I live in Davis (by Sacramento), my cousins in Bakersfield. A typical hot summer day in Bakersfield is around 105/77, Davis 101/59. So every day (actually we don’t get the breeze in some weather patterns, and we stay warm at night, but those are maybe only 5-10 days a summer) we get a fresh reset. Mornings can almost be cool, but the house cools down over night and A/C isn’t needed until late in the day, if at all. With long eaves and windows shut by 10am, we can get by without A/C if the temp stays below 96-97. Above that we turn on the A/C at around 4-5pm.

And one last note. This kind of weather pattern – where the temp drops quickly – is perfect for a whole house fan. I need to add one.

I’m livin’ ’em now. 😛

I live in FL. Days running into the 90s with humidity >80%

My AC, 20y old, decided to give up the ghost. I will be getting a new unit, but trying to find a good deal, rather than just pay through the nose. But it’s been “fun”, for sure. House temps running well above 80, probably above 85 at mid-day (I’m got two thermometers AND the AC thermo, itself new, and each of them tells me a different temperature. :-/ Go figure.) Cools back down at night as the exterior temp goes below 80 and i open the windows.

I remember the 60s and the 70s once again. What Fun.

I spent several summers as a tyke on Grandma’s farm in Tidewater, VA with my same-age cousin, he and I sleeping naked on the screened back porch with an oscillating fan. Near a river and the bay, the humidity never quit. When I became old enough getting shipped off to summer camp in far northern New Hampshire for several years was a blessing.

The worst part was that we had to wear suits and ties, and none of the teachers would let us take our jackets off. My school wardrobe consisted of a dark grey wool flannel suit and a Harris tweed sport coat with khakis or wool slacks. Great for a cold winter day but excruciating for three months of the school year.

Today I see kids in shorts and tee shirts waiting for the bus to their air conditioned school. I wonder when the schools will be going “green’.

Growing up in the 50s-60s in the Texas Panhandle, we only had a swamp cooler that fit into one window in my brother’s bedroom, and the air never did get back to our bedroom, but cooled the front part of the house pretty well.
It was a HUGE metal box that sat on a little wooden “deck” in the side yard of the house.
We never did get refrigerated air, although my mom’s sister’s husband insisted on it in their house further east. We enjoyed staying over there when we visited Grandma & Grandpa in the same town, although they lived out in the country in a big “ranch house” with the sleeping porch. Nice at night, especially in thunderstorms, but still and hot during the day. Many friends and relatives over there had the high ceilings and the “dog run” architecture that cooled the houses.

@ Dnaxy > “The early car air conditioner was a metallic cylinder,”
We had one of those in our old Buick, and my mother had to pull a cord to rotate the cylinder with the pad into the reservoir of water on the bottom. Sometimes it would spill through the vents, but who cared!
My dad gave it to me after I married, and we used it in our Volkswagen Bug until it finally rusted through. I really hated to get rid of the old thing, but we couldn’t keep hauling it around back then.

@ physicsguy > ” In the neighborhood I grew up in (Lakewood) in 1960 when we moved into the house….zero trees”
We live in Lakewood now, and love the trees! Compared to the Texas Gulf coast, where we came from, any increase in humidity is unnoticeable.

@ Leland > “when Texas had its Valentine Day power outrage a couple of years ago; I missed the small wall mounted gas furnaces that kept each room warm.

I remember those very well, and they do a great job – for one room.
When Denver Metro had a power outage for a couple of days in the winter of 2018 (though not as bad as TX Snowmageddon), I called my HVAC guy and had one installed as soon as he could get it ordered.
It has no electric connection at all, because, although it burns natural gas just like our regular furnace, that one would not work without the fan running.

In re DC, environmentalists, and elitist idiots in general: they never volunteer to be the first ones to sacrifice for Gaia; it’s always us peons who get that honor.