The Texas Heat Once Got So Hot, It’s Killed People in the 1980s

It gets hot in Texas...yeah I know. Shocking right? We can easily see temperatures hit triple degree weather in the year; but usually it doesn't kill people....USUALLY. That wasn't the case however in the 1980s. Decades ago, Texas suffered through the worst heatwave in history.

This is the story of the 1980 Texas Heat Wave

From mid July to September of 1980, the United States Heat Wave affected several states in the central & eastern US. Texas was one of the states that got hit hard.

The hottest day Texas experienced was July 17, where 80% of the state had temperatures over 100 degrees. Nearly 25% of the state reached 105 degrees; 3 cities in particular had record highs of 108 degrees: Bessemer , Aliceville, and Jasper.

Even before the massive heat wave swept through the nations, parts of Texas were already feeling the heat. Like Austin, who experienced temperatures as high as 105 in late June.

The Texas Archive of the Moving Picture even uploaded a video with various news reports from all over the state. In total, an estimated 120 people died in Texas ALONE & thousands of livestock & crops were killed from the intense heat. As a whole, over 1,700 people died throughout the entire United States.

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Amazingly, this isn't even the hottest temperatures Texas has seen before; we've seen temperatures reach over 110 after the 1980 heat wave (I couldn't imagine how bad it would've been if this happened in the 90s...).

And the heat waves never stopped coming even 40 years later...

Thankfully we have not see as a disaster this bad regarding the heat & hopefully we never will again...

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