Austin

Austin is a city in the Hill Country area of the United States state of Texas with a population of over 900,000 people. It is the state capital of Texas, a college town, and a hub of alternative culture distant from the larger cities on the US coastlines, yet the city is fast gentrifying as its popularity grows. Austin’s mentality is often printed on T-shirts and bumper stickers that proclaim “Keep Austin Weird.” Because of the high number of venues, Austin is often touted as the “Live Music Capital of the World.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

• Austin Visitor Center, 209 E. Sixth Street, +1-866 GO-AUSTIN. Daily 8:30AM–5:30PM.

Austin has a humid subtropical climate, according to the Köppen climate classification. This climate is distinguished by very long, scorching summers, warm transitional seasons, and brief, moderate winters. Austin receives 34.32 inches (872 mm) of annual rainfall, which falls mainly equally throughout the year, with May and June being the wettest months. Sunshine is plentiful throughout the year, with about 2,650 hours of bright sunshine every year, or 60.3 percent of the potential total.

Austin’s summers are quite hot. Average highs in July and August are usually in the high-90s °F (34–36 °C), with triple digits being typical. On 116 days every year, highs hit 90 °F (32 °C), while on 18 days, highs surpass 100 °F (38 °C). The hottest temperature ever recorded was 112 °F (44 °C), which occurred on September 5, 2000, and August 28, 2011. Summer humidity is erratic and highly reliant on fluctuating patterns of air flow and wind direction. Humidity increases when air moves inland from the Gulf of Mexico, but drops dramatically as it passes through West Texas’ Chihuahuan Desert.

Austin’s winters are pleasant. In December and January, daytime highs average 63 °F (17 °C) and 62 °F (17 °C), respectively, with nighttime lows reaching or above freezing just 19 times each year. During 88 evenings every year, the temperature dips below 45 °F (7 °C), including most nights between mid-December and mid-February. On January 31, 1949, the lowest temperature ever recorded was 2 degrees Fahrenheit (19 degrees Celsius). Every two years or so, Austin is hit by an ice storm that causes roadways to become impassable for 24 to 48 hours. On January 24, 2014, Austin experienced 0.04 inches (1 mm) of ice, resulting in 278 vehicle accidents. Similarly, snowfall is quite uncommon in Austin. On February 4, 2011, a 0.9-inch (2-cm) snowfall caused more than 300 traffic accidents. In 1985, a 13-inch (33-cm) blizzard brought the city to a halt.

Austin, the most southern of the forty-eight contiguous states’ capitals, is situated in Central Texas, along the Balcones Escarpment and Interstate 35, 150 miles northwest of Houston. It is also around 160 miles south of Dallas and 75 miles north of San Antonio. Its elevation ranges from 425 feet (130 meters) to over 1,000 feet (305 meters) above sea level. The city has a total size of 271.8 square miles in 2010. (704 km2). Water covers around 6.9 square miles (18 km2) of this region.

Austin is located on the Colorado River and has three man-made (artificial) lakes within city limits: Lady Bird Lake (previously known as Town Lake), Lake Austin (both formed by dams along the Colorado River), and Lake Walter E. Long, which is used for cooling water for the Decker Power Plant. Mansfield Dam and the southern end of Lake Travis are both inside the municipal boundaries. The Colorado River flows through Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin, and Lake Travis. Because to its location on the Balcones Fault, majority of the city’s eastern section is flat, with heavy clay and loam soils, but the western part and western suburbs are rolling hills on the verge of the Texas Hill Country. Because the hills to the west are mostly limestone rock with a thin layer of topsoil on top, areas of the city are regularly vulnerable to flash floods generated by thunderstorm runoff. The Lower Colorado River Authority manages a series of dams that construct the Texas Highland Lakes to assist regulate runoff and produce hydroelectric power. The lakes also provide opportunities for boating, swimming, and other types of leisure inside a number of parks along the lake’s shoreline.

Austin is positioned at the crossroads of four main biological areas, making it a temperate-to-hot green oasis with a highly varied climate that combines elements of the desert, the tropics, and a wetter climate. The region is environmentally and physiologically varied, and it is home to a wide range of animals and plants. Notably, the region is home to many different varieties of wildflowers that bloom all year, but notably in the spring, including the famed bluebonnets, some of which were planted by “Lady Bird” Johnson, wife of former President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Mount Bonnell is a well-known landmark in Austin. It is a natural limestone formation approximately 780 feet (238 m) above sea level that overlooks Lake Austin on the Colorado River, with an observation deck about 200 feet (61 m) below its peak.

Austin’s soils vary from shallow, gravelly clay loams over limestone in the west to deep, fine sandy loams, silty clay loams, silty clays, or clays in the east. Some of the clays have strong shrink-swell qualities and are challenging to deal with in most settings. Many of Austin’s soils, particularly those rich in clay, are mildly to moderately alkaline and rich in free calcium carbonate.

In 2010, the Gross Domestic Product of the Greater Austin Metropolitan Statistical Area was $86 billion. Austin is regarded as a significant high-tech hub. Thousands of graduates from the University of Texas at Austin’s engineering and computer science departments each year offer a continuous flow of personnel that serve to power Austin’s technology and military industrial sectors. Because of the region’s tremendous expansion, Forbes ranked the Austin metropolitan area first among all large cities for employment in 2012 in their annual poll, while WSJ Marketwatch ranked the area first for expanding firms. By 2013, Austin was placed 14th on Forbes’ list of the Best Places to Work and Live (directly below Dallas, No. 13 on the list).

Because of the region’s large concentration of high-tech enterprises, Austin was severely impacted by the dot-com bubble and subsequent crash in the late 1990s. The Austin Independent School District, the City of Austin, Dell, the United States Federal Government, Freescale Semiconductor (spun off from Motorola in 2004), IBM, St. David’s Healthcare Partnership, Seton Family of Hospitals, the State of Texas, Texas State University, and the University of Texas at Austin are among Austin’s largest employers. 3M, Apple, AMD, Applied Materials, ARM Holdings, Bigcommerce, Bioware, Blizzard Entertainment, Buffalo Technology, Cirrus Logic, Cisco Systems, Dropbox, eBay, PayPal, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, HomeAway, Hostgator, Intel Corporation, National Instruments, Nvidia,Oracle, Polycom, Qualcomm, Inc., Rackspace, RetailMeNot, Rooster Teeth, In 2010, Facebook received a grant to develop a downtown office that may create up to 200 employees. The rise of technological firms has earned the area the moniker “the Silicon Hills,” and has fueled development that has substantially extended the city.

Austin is also growing as a centre for pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, with over 85 of them based in the city. The Milken Institute classified the city as the No.12 biotech and life science hub in the United States. There are companies there including Hospira, Pharmaceutical Product Development, and ArthroCare Corporation.

Whole Foods Market (often referred to simply as “Whole Foods”) is an upmarket, multinational grocery store company that specializes in fresh and packaged food goods, many of which have an organic/local/”natural” focus. It was formed in Austin and is based there.

Freescale Semiconductor, Temple-Inland, Sweet Leaf Tea Company, Keller Williams Realty, National Western Life, GSD&M, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Golfsmith, Forestar Group, and EZCorp are all located in Austin.

Austin has a strong network of independent, distinct, locally owned enterprises and organizations in addition to national and worldwide corporations.