"Richard Kaplan" wrote
While such short trips can be extremely
convenient uses of an airplane when weather cooperates, you are correct that
there are lots fewer practical deviation options on such a short trip. This
may well be a big difference between general aviation in the Northeast vs.
in Texas.

I suspect you are right. There are few meaningful destinations within
160 nm of Houston - even Dallas, which is right next door by Texas
standards, is significantly farther away. My only recurring trip of
under 160 nm is Austin - it is also the trip that, proportionately,
gets the most delay time. It's a 45 minute trip for me in good
weather; in bad weather it's not particularly rare for it to take
twice that due to deviations/delays. On the other hand, it's still
over two hours by car, and that's if I'm willing to speed a lot.

Certainly deviations/delays for weather have a proportionally bigger
impact on short trips - to the point where it may not be worth it. Of
course as a result, you get less experience optimizing your deviation,
and that makes the deviation even bigger.

Michael