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Cities with Nice Weather

jdonland.github.io

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Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#371

Post by thefringthing »

irrational wrote: post #359
acchow wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is "Cities with nice weather" but in the writeup they didn't even look at cities with nice weather. FTA: "The area of this plot I’m most interested in is the vertical slice around Toronto" They were investigating cities with "average temperatures" around Toronto's. Which is going to be very cold, as you mentioned.

Yes, the title was clearly click bait. It got me to click, but had nothing to do with the cities with the nicest weather.

I didn't think anyone would post this to HN when I wrote it, so I certainly wasn't baiting clicks, except perhaps from the friends with whom I shared it directly.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#372

Post by gwill »

thefringthing wrote: post #371
irrational wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the title was clearly click bait. It got me to click, but had nothing to do with the cities with the nicest weather.

I didn't think anyone would post this to HN when I wrote it, so I certainly wasn't baiting clicks, except perhaps from the friends with whom I shared it directly.

your perception of what is "nice weather" matches up great with my own. Edinburgh has nearly perfect weather for my tastes.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#373

Post by smcl »

Wistar wrote: post #334
nicoburns wrote: post #301

IMO Medellín, Colombia (known as "the city of eternal spring") is about perfect from a weather perspective. It averages around 23c year round (varying between about 18 and 28). It does have a rainy season, but even then mornings are often sunny (afternoon not so much).

A good friend spends a lot of time in Montevideo, Uruguay and he says it has fairly steady pleasant weather.

Direct quote from my gf who lived in MVD for a while - “it’s cold and rainy often, and in winter it sucks because none of the houses have central heating”. For context we now live in Central Europe (toasty summers and long cold winters).

She loved being there and to be honest I'd definitely visit, but I guess there's more to it than just the average temperature outside

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#374

Post by thefringthing »

nullgeo wrote: post #341
munificent wrote: post #339

Looking at the variance as a single datapoint doesn't capture temperature information very well. A single rare outlier data will make a city look bad even if most days are milkd. I hacked together a little program to try something different. My rule was to look at the daily average temperature for a bunch of cities on a single year. Then count up the number of "good temperature" days which I defined to be within 60°F…

Bob, are you using the same data as the OP?

Nope; I used the Wikipedia article I mentioned. This is a different, more detailed, table of temperature data.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#375

Post by 867-5309 »

thefringthing wrote: post #267
867-5309 wrote: post #218

seemingly the only English-speaking city on the list, is this Stanley, NB or Stanley, WI?

It's Stanley, Falkland Islands.

I'm not so sure about that. googling for annual weather there returns

"winter is cold, windy and snowy, while summer is very cool, if not cold, and it's rainy and windy as well"

"summers are cold, the winters are very cold, and it is extremely windy and mostly cloudy year round"

but then, Reykjavik is on the list so who knows

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#376

Post by scoofy »

donavanm wrote: post #82
rgmerk wrote: 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…

Having spent meaningful time in Reykjavik… hard concur. Seeing Dublin and Chicago in their target range simply reinforces the doubt. The bad assumptions start with average temp, but this is where it goes off the rails: > Let’s see the same plot, including only the cities within one degree of Toronto’s average temperature. So theyre really looking at “cities with an average temp similar to toronto, but lower variabili…

Seriously, if Californian coastal cities are not predominantly featured, there's something wrong with the methodology.

Whether you like chilly Eureka, temperate San Francisco, moderate San Diego, or warm Los Angeles, you can't get more consistent weather than out here in California.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#377

Post by smcl »

arethuza wrote: post #332
TremendousJudge wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never been to Edinburgh, but mm/year isn't the best way of saying if a place is wet or not. A city that has that horrible misty rain two thirds of the year may not score high a mm/year measure, but in reality you'll be wet two days out of three.

"in reality you'll be wet two days out of three." I walked and cycled to work in Edinburgh for ~20 years and I really didn't get wet that often, although I did certainly get drookit a few times. Edit: I spend quite a lot of time in the areas of Scotland that are pretty wet (> 3000mm/year) - Edinburgh isn't anything like those.

I've noticed it rains differently on the continent. When it's raining here people will often shelter in doorways or bus shelters because they know it'll usually be done in a few minutes and they can wait it out. Scottish rain is very much a "today it is raining, and that's just how it's gonna be" thing. If I'm honest it never bothered me that much - a brolly will suffice in the city or a waterproof on a walk in the countryside.

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#378

Post by smcl »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #335
arethuza wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"in reality you'll be wet two days out of three." I walked and cycled to work in Edinburgh for ~20 years and I really didn't get wet that often, although I did certainly get drookit a few times. Edit: I spend quite a lot of time in the areas of Scotland that are pretty wet (> 3000mm/year) - Edinburgh isn't anything like those.

Yeah, I don't know how Edinburgh is specifically, just that in general I think using this measurement is hiding part of the truth. In places with wet and dry seasons, you might get rain for a month and the rest of the year is dry, but mm/year might still be very high.

The wikipedia article Arethuza posted shows average precipitation for European cities by month as well, so you can actually see how this breaks down. For example Istanbul definitely has this - it has more rain than Edinburgh overall but it's concentrated in the winter months. Interestingly (and as a total aside) I was there in February once and was shocked when the temperature was below zero, it was a relief when we escaped to Izmir and it was >15C :D

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#379

Post by dbetteridge »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #240
lelanthran wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Johannesburg's rival, Cape Town, would also lay claim to "great weather". I lived in Cape Town. Would not live there again. Winter is very very cold, it rains every single day and the wind is insane, making you need warmer clothing than you would think. Summer is very dry, it never rains and the mountain keeps catching fire which gets spread by the constant high-speed winds. There are advantages though: six months…

Cool rainy winters and hot dry summers are characteristic of the Mediterranean climate, which is often seen as "pleasant". I thought you would mention that it can be hot in CT in Jan-Feb, in the 30-40C range. But it's a dry heat. > Winter is very very cold Since it does not freeze in CT, not that cold. Not even as cold as JHB. > it rains every single day It does not typically constant rain every day in CT in winter (…

> I thought you would mention that it can be hot in CT in Jan-Feb, in the 30-40C range. But it's a dry heat

Thought you were talking about Perth, Australia there for a sec!

The running joke is 'it's a dry heat' when referring to the week long runs of 40+ degrees

Re: Cities with Nice Weather

#380

Post by dwd »

dam_broke_it wrote: post #300
dwd wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

San Diego and Houston in the same sentence about weather, dafuq????

I think the confusion is while the post says nice weather, it's more about nice climate. There are other factors, good latitude is just the better starting point in my opinion.

But you are right, Houston is really not the same as it doesn't have a directly adjacent ocean and mountain backdrop and there's a big difference between sitting on the Pacific than sitting on the Gulf.

But even the nicest places can have bad weather events:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Eastern_Australia_floods

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