I used to keep and breed mali uromastyx outdoors during the summers here in Virginia. I currently keep and have kept a number of desert species outdoors here in Virginia (currently year round painted agamas, collared lizards, and summers bearded dragons and granite spiney lizards also). Ambient humidity has never been a problem for my lizards and it can be very humid here at times (we have much higher humidity and much more rain than Arizona). Constant damp conditions on the other hand are a big problem and this should be accounted for in the design of the outdoor enclosure. As far as heat- Lizards are like bricks- they will build heat from solar radiation. They don’t work the same way under artificial lighting indoors as they do under solar radiation. I have a video I put up on my youtube channel last year showing my collared lizards’ body temperatures on a day in the 50s as up over 100. They were warmer than the rocks they were sitting on by a few degrees I think because they had less mass so they required less time to heat up in the sunshine than the rocks they were sitting on. When I bred the Malis, they were able to get their body temperatures up and required shade even though our average day temperatures here during the summer are in the upper 80s, low 90s with some days in the mid-upper 90s and some days in the upper 70s, low 80s. The lower end wouldn’t work for all summer, but the lizards will brumate if there is no sun (rainy or cloudy days). If there is sunshine they do fine and you have that aplenty in AZ. On the other hand, I don’t think it is a great idea to go full time outdoors with them if you have never kept a lizard before. You need to understand how the lizard uses its environment- especially for thermoregulation so you don’t cook the lizard. Shade and cool are important, not only heat and sun. I use 2 kinds of enclosures for breeding lizards- table top screen cages which are not naturalistic (I use short chopped hay mix from TSC for substrate for desert lizards- the lizards can burrow in to escape heat if the substrate is deep enough and the hay acts as an insulator. It is also edible for the lizards and makes cleanup of poop really easy because it clumps up and dries poo pretty fast. These cages I cover with tarps during the rain. I also use enclosures with walls set into the ground . These enclosures have a roof over 2/3 and sun and rain can enter 1/3, so the lizards can always remain dry even when it rains.
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