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Show HN: The best time to visit any city

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Re: Show HN: The best time to visit any city

#81

I love your weather summaries. Your formula nails it with this one: https://championtraveler.com/dates/best-time-to-visit-san-di... Most weather summaries seem to miss that early/mid-September is significantly hotter than the traditionally hot months of July and August for most locations. https://championtraveler.com/dates/best-time-to-visit-louisv... > When can you find snow in Louisville? Weather stations report a…

However, there does seem to be a mistake in the precipitation section: "If dry weather is what you’re after, the months with the lowest chance of precipitation in San Diego are December, February, and then January."

Good eye. @ignostic, it's reporting the highest percent chance of precipitation by month, not lowest, in the textual summary of both cities.

"The lowest chance of rain and snow" blurb is correct.

Re: Show HN: The best time to visit any city

#83

Weather is just one small piece of people's thought process when planning a vacation. But this tool is clearly all about weather... Perhaps finding a new way to describe it other than "the best time to visit" would avoid people coming down on the tool because they want to talk about more than the weather.

Yeah, as someone from Southern California, you don't really need to think about weather when you come visit... maybe a bit of june gloom, but even that isn't bad.

Re: Show HN: The best time to visit any city

#84
post #16

This is super interesting idea and something I'd reference a lot. The big question I have is what are your factors for deciding the best time to visit? I'd argue setting up the context is really important because weather is a major factor but it isn't the only one. There are times of year that have cultural significance as well as annual events, etc. I like the safety advisory aspect and the population of travelers.…

Yes! There's a few cities I visit very often but I ONLY visit in the "off season." Everything is much cheaper, things don't sell out, I don't get bothered by stupid events I have no interest in, parking is free or reduced price, I don't have to sit in traffic, and crowds are non-existent. I'd rather avoid crowds than pretty much any other factor other than maybe price.

I had a great trip with a group of friends to Iceland in mid-winter, which was a time that other people were reluctant to go. It definitely made certain travel activities harder or impossible, but we got to experience lots of great things and many prices were lower. We also saw the spectacular Reykjavík new year's fireworks.

But I'd also appreciate this site's advice is handy because weather in a distant place is so unfamiliar and can have such a big impact on a trip.

Another idea: maybe look through each category in the Köppen classification and figure out what weather factors in such a climate would most affect the quality of someone's visit. For example,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classifica...

Then somehow highlight those particular factors for each place. (I don't really know how best to organize this information.)

Re: Show HN: The best time to visit any city

#85
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! There's a few cities I visit very often but I ONLY visit in the "off season." Everything is much cheaper, things don't sell out, I don't get bothered by stupid events I have no interest in, parking is free or reduced price, I don't have to sit in traffic, and crowds are non-existent. I'd rather avoid crowds than pretty much any other factor other than maybe price.

http://offpeak.io the project my team has been working on aims to solve this exact problem. We help travelers avoid peak season, and peak dates that are often associated with large business conferences.

The search is really frustrating. Everything I type is not there and then it shows me things that are very far away from what I typed. It may be better to show a list organized by region or show the closest location you do cover to the one that was typed in.

Re: Show HN: The best time to visit any city

#86
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! There's a few cities I visit very often but I ONLY visit in the "off season." Everything is much cheaper, things don't sell out, I don't get bothered by stupid events I have no interest in, parking is free or reduced price, I don't have to sit in traffic, and crowds are non-existent. I'd rather avoid crowds than pretty much any other factor other than maybe price.

http://offpeak.io the project my team has been working on aims to solve this exact problem. We help travelers avoid peak season, and peak dates that are often associated with large business conferences.

It seems to be missing all but the largest cities. My guess is that you are manually adding data which would mean higher quality at the cost of general usefulness.

Re: Show HN: The best time to visit any city

#87
On the 'Weather in Sydney' page: "The warmest time of year is generally mid-January where highs are regularly around 61.9°F (16.6°C) with temperatures rarely dropping below 50.3°F (10.2°C) at night"

I think something is off here. That sounds like our winter weather! I would guess our average summer temp would be closer to 30deg C

Re: Show HN: The best time to visit any city

#88
Many of the temperature charts have an uptick at the extreme right (end of December), and then (if you imagine them wrapping around to January) have a non-continuous drop at the start of January. I think there's something slightly funky there.

I saw at least one celsius chart where the data overflowed the maximum (20C) and the plot mashed against the top of the frame.

You could avoid having to double render the same data (and wasting space) by putting celsius on the right y axis of the farenheit chart.

Once you fix the bugs, pay a UI designer to give all of the pages a refresh. Work some SEO, and see if you can find a way to give search engine bots all of the various city pages (which I assume you dynamically generate). Throw in some hotel/airline-ticket site affiliate links and you should get a nice stream of income from this.

Re: Show HN: The best time to visit any city

#89

On the 'Weather in Sydney' page: "The warmest time of year is generally mid-January where highs are regularly around 61.9°F (16.6°C) with temperatures rarely dropping below 50.3°F (10.2°C) at night" I think something is off here. That sounds like our winter weather! I would guess our average summer temp would be closer to 30deg C

Likewise Perth has the same error. "The warmest time of year is generally mid-February where highs are regularly around 63.7°F (17.6°C)". The text in Overall Perth Travel Experience by Season is also wrong.

I like the concept though.

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