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Cities with Nice Weather

jdonland.github.io

181–190 of 404 posts

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#181
post #65

If your methodology for identifying "cities with nice weather" returns Reykjavik in its top ten, either your sample only includes places with terrible weather, or your methodology is completely whacked. Reykjavik is a wonderful little city, but it's cold, extremely windy, and often very miserable. The place with the most pleasant weather I've ever experienced is probably the area around the Gold Coast, Queensland, Au…

As a Queenslander, the crime rate on the Gold Coast, particularly around Surfers Paradise, subjectively feels a bit higher than other cities of a similar size. (It’s still nothing too bad, nor am I looking at objective data currently.)

I know a few people who wouldn't live anywhere else after settling in Slacks Creek up in the hills behind the Gold Coast.

Personally I'm more a Sunshine Coast person. But the money however seems to have discovered Byron Bay: A few of the lower-lying coastal towns flood frequently though.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is trivially fixed with blackout curtains. Dealing with lack of sun is harder.

Lack of sun is trivially fixed with lights. Blackout curtains don't form a good seal and always let light bleed through around the edges.

Instal proper window shutters. Your rooms will be pitch black.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#183

> We’ll ignore any other weather characteristics like humidity, rain, wind, diurnal temperature difference, etc. I chuckled at this. Ignoring factors like humidity, rain, wind, and number of sunny days gives you a very distorted vision of the weather in a given place.

Well, that's oceanic vs. continental climate for you: a large mass of water nearby (preferably to the East) tends to even out temperature differences, but you also get a lot of moisture. You can't have everything, as they say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_climate

I'm quite surprised Quito (capital of Ecuador) didn't come up however: it's near the Equator, so constant temperatures, and at very high altitude, which reduces the temperature to pleasant levels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito#Climate).

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#184
post #133
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snow isn't bad compared to rain. At least it looks nice and lights up the night.

What? Snow is way worse. There's basically no comparison. If it rains, you can still drive, walk and cycle. If it snows, your car will get stuck in the snow, your bike will get stuck in the snow, and you will completely soak your boots and pants as you slog through the snow. Things get somewhat improved when they plough the roads, but the big problem with ploughing is that it polishes the road surface. So if you're w…

There is no problem cycling in snow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

If you have proper snow you won't get wet as the snow won't melt.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#185
post #68

> We’ll ignore any other weather characteristics like humidity, rain, wind, diurnal temperature difference, etc. If the author ends up moving to Edinburgh based on this, we can count on seeing a follow up analysis that doesn’t ignore rain.

Edinburgh's not so bad for rain. Not compared to Glasgow, at least.

The wind, however, is incessant from October to Easter, and somehow is always blowing into your face. When it does rain, it comes down sideways. Add wind chill to the already cool temperatures and it's absolutely bitter.

I love Edinburgh, lived there for a few years, but it's tough going.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#186
post #43
post #24

The SF Bay Area has the nicest weather year round, which is probably a strong contributing factor to why the area is so rich. I'm currently in Tokyo. The temparetrue is not the nicest year round, but it feels very natural. There are four seasons. Winter is tolerable and it rarely goes below 0C. It snows about once a year. Summer is hot, just like it should be, but it hardly goes above 32C. The only thing that bothers…

The main problem with the California coast is that the water is so cold. Between NorCal and SoCal there is pretty much an ideal weather zone for everyone.

Cold water is only a problem the first few minutes. After that, it is refreshing. You find that out every single time you gave it a go and stayed. But when you don't, or the one time you went in and out immediately, are the times you remember when you don't have enough data points where you stayed.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#187

Johannesburg, South Africa. A city with many problems but everyone agrees the weather is great. Average temperature per month ranges from 10C to 20C. Extremes are normally between 0C and 30C. (It can feel very cold when it goes below 0C because the housing is not built for that.) Low humidity. It rains less than 90 days a year and most of that is in short, concentrated afternoon thunderstorms in the summer. I'd have…

That would be if your starting point was cities in the temperate/sub-tropical latitudes, but I would probably favour coastal cities over inland as you get less extreme day/night temperature difference.

Somewhere like Durbin sits right in the same band as the Tweed Coast Australia (Byron Bay, etc). Gold Coast and Rio are slightly more tropical, somewhere like Perth slightly less. In the Northern hemisphere: San Diego, Houston, Savannah (Georgia), the Canary Islands, The Levant, Kuwait and Shanghai are in that zone. A little more humidity and the Bahamas, Hawaii, The Whitsundays are looking pretty nice. I spent a couple of years in East Malaysia and once you get used to the humidity you stop checking the forecast as it's going to be 32c during the day/25c at night.

As an aside, there could be a correlation between nice temperature seaside places, and where you're mostly likely to run into a Great White shark if you go swimming.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is trivially fixed with blackout curtains. Dealing with lack of sun is harder.

Lack of sun is trivially fixed with lights. Blackout curtains don't form a good seal and always let light bleed through around the edges.

One of my best investments ever was a good sleeping mask. These do not let any light in (even around the edges if it's a good fit), and unlike blackout curtains they're portable.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#189
Cuzco is at a high altitude, which is an important metric, too -- it is relatively cold and has lower levels of oxygen.

Algeciras or Tarifa or anything in the close vicinity to Gibraltar is nice, as there is an unusually cool climate that is much more agreeable than other parts of Southern Spain (usually way too hot, e.g., Seville).

Jamestown, St. Helena is also nice weather in your definition, and they speak English. But the humidity may be a bit too high.

How this can be found automatically would be interesting. I was surprised not to find the above places in the article.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#190
post #120
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say any (regular) amount of snow disqualifies your city as having "nice weather".

Snow isn't bad compared to rain. At least it looks nice and lights up the night.

Snow gets behind my glasses and into my eyes, blows into my ears, and gets blown into places that rain wouldn't normally reach, which then melts and gets wet.

This means you need to seal yourself up much more rather than just getting an umbrella. It also is much more difficult to cycle in and covers up the street markings.

I love how snow looks but then whenever I go out in it, I remember how much I hate it.

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