In the southwest we make fairly heavy use of swamp coolers (evaporative cooling) which lets you pick your poison. They work pretty well in the more arid areas,

In the southwest we make fairly heavy use of swamp coolers (evaporative cooling) which lets you pick your poison. They work pretty well in the more arid areas, but can only drop the temperature about 20-25 degrees, so on the hottest days, you crave real A/C. But where I live (Socorro, from the article), that winds up being only a few weeks a year thanks to the altitude, and many of us just suffer through it. I just put in A/C at the new house though... My recollection is that the humidity in Phoenix actually gets higher than you'd expect due to swamp cooling, lower altitude, less temperature swing day-to-night, and a huge amount of swimming pools, but I have no source for that, it might be bullshit.