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, Australia (at least, most of the time - they've had an extraordinary run of flooding rains, recently). 70 degree Fahrenheit maximums in the winter, 82 in the summer, warm-water beaches, sea breezes to take the edge off the humidity - and there's mountains next door you can recreate in during summer to take the edge off. What more could you possibly want, except possibly snow if you're one of those weirdos who likes the stuff?
A more appropriate methodology would take into account wet bulb temperatures, rainfall amounts, hours of sunshine, and wind (aside from its effect on wet bulb temperature a howling gale is unpleasant in its own right).
Still, given the poster's starting point was Toronto...well...
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 variability.” That is certainly one wag to look at weather, but Id be hard pressed to accept its “nice.”
All this comunal reaction against OP's methodology makes me smile. After spending miserable weeks under, sometimes tree shades but, most of the time, hot Brazilian sun observing whet bulbs, anemometers and what not, during "Environmental Comfort" class at Architecture school, I could not help myself felling anything other than pure hatred towards OP's assumptions and overall lack of understanding of what "nice" means. So again, it doesn't come often, but HN people, you made my day, thank you.
Well the thing about Dublin at least, you're unlikely to get six foot snow banks, or Chicago style freezing winds. But it's got the most bland weather both summer and winter. Never been to Iceland, but I guess the clue is in the name there!
Oddly, Iceland rarely if ever gets really cold and even snow is mostly transient. Temps mostly hover between 0 and 10 C (30-50 F), and it rains quite a bit.
It has often been suggested that the names of Greenland and Iceland should be reversed, and/or that "Greenland" was thus misnamed for marketing purposes to entice Viking settlers.
Iceland is cold, but a very enjoyable kind of cold. There's this crispness in the air in Reykjavik which I always liked a lot. It's actually super fun to walk around the city or even away from the city. I dread the extreme winters of American cities though.
Assuming Dublin is pretty similar to the UK, it's the blandness that gets you. I'll take inconvenient variety over months of grey, dark dampness anytime.
Similar enough, but tends to be ever so slightly more bland than even the UK. If I remember rightly Ireland has the highest lows and lowest highs of anywhere in Europe.
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.
No wind is factored in this equation.
That kills Reykjavik.
From page:
"Next Steps:
It would be interesting to use detailed time series for each city and a utility function on temperatures (perhaps including wind chill and humidex) to determine which cities are truly mean-variance optimal."
Yep, was there in this February and while the temperature is not bad (bring hand warmers), there were multiple wind storms. One of them was so bad that you simply couldn't walk. Otherwise a wonderful city.
Different people like different weather. For me e.g. Edinburgh has the perfect weather (I'm planning to move there). Where I am currently (Poland), I'm miserable in the summer, when humidity drops as low as 40% and temperatures get above 25°C (up to 33°C, or even 42°C in some godforesaken parts of the country). For me to feel comfortable, 22°C is the max (-5°C is the soft min, but will also take -20°C over 30°C), humidity should be at around 70% optimally (don't mind if it's higher than that) and definitely not lower than 50% (breathing gets less pleasant). I also prefer it when the sky is cloudy. Clear blue sky makes me feel as if I was living in a Windows XP wallpaper (kitchy) honestly, and it usually means in the middle of the day there is too much non-diffused light around (looks mildly worse aesthetically in my eyes, a lot worse on photos, and subconsciously I feel attacked by the rough changes in strength of light in different places, with it being really intense in some places, but practically non-existent in others).
I lived in Edinburgh for 3.5 years and rn I have moved back to Poland. The summers in Edi are great for working, most of the time it is very slightly below t-shirt weather. However, the weather oveerall is really bland for my taste. I enjoy the variety of winter snow and summer heat.
Also, once in a while it is very windy which is not too pleasant. The air feels fresh as well because it is somewhat windy all the time. I remember stepping out of the plane from Edinburgh once and feeling a weird sensation of quietness in my ears - turned out my ears just got used to constant wind.
I remember a colleague who I worked alongside in Edinburgh commenting that his first impression coming from Spain was how quickly the clouds move here.
Definitely, I live in South Africa which is probably a bit warmer than you'd like. When it hits low 22°C's in the evening then its about time for me to go and find a jersey.
Not really, rather people get used to where they have to live and then rationalize the fact that they "like it" because they don't really have a choice.
That doesn't square with the fact that people who can afford it choose wildly-different places based on weather. Loads of people move from places like Edinburgh precisely due to weather, and move somewhere which is hotter, drier and sunnier, while I and some other people do the opposite.
Other things factor into moves besides weather, even when weather is a factor. Certainly there is variability but it seems pretty clear that warmer, sunnier, areas are most desirable based on the costs of housing.
When you really start looking at people with true choices, i.e. the very rich, they want moderate weather with hot enough summers for water sports to be a viable activity, but nice enough that other outdoor activities aren't prohibitively hot and extreme weather isn't a concern.
A good example of this is Lake Oconee Georgia. It's basically bumfuck nowhere yet there's a plethora of multi-million dollar homes because the weather and geography are what falls in the ideal range for most people. So of course it's generally inaccessible to the average person but the super wealthy are gating it off and enjoying it.
people live places with various seasons and often have a favorite season. Their favorite is not always the longest season as well, which kind of throws out your rationalization theory.
In fact, this post wouldn't exist if what you said is true.
Also, hours of daylight in winter is a factor. I was in Reykjavik for Christmas once and there was about 4 hours of sunlight each day. It confuses the body.
That's what people always seem to be concerned about… but the real problem up north is the eternal summer days. Enjoy never getting a night's proper sleep!
It actually isn't, because most home lighting is far less intense than the sun and the wrong spectrum to boot. Light therapy works but sitting in front of a big bright box is not terribly convenient or fun.
And if your blackout curtains don't work, get better ones. Many Nordic households have double curtains, one solid plastic to block the vast majority of the light and the other from cloth to diffuse/block the rest and look pretty.
No it isn't. Sunlight is an important source of Vitamin D, which affects immune system, hormones, and mood. There are special lamps to supplement this, but it is not so trivial as turning on "lights".
You want “ Blackout EZ - Total Sunlight Blocking Window Covers” (available on Amazon) which seal to Velcro strips that are mounted around your windows with screws, and a DIY hard shell window valence above that, plus blackout curtains over that just so it doesn’t look so stark. That’s what I do.
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.
I'm curious to try a solution such as electrochromic glass, but to get a better blackout the glass seems to need to be tinted. But on the Dreamliner plane, they seem to have solved this. Not sure if it's just uneconomical at a house scale.
It's not really that confusing if you actually live there. Speaking from experience, since I grew up further north than 99% of the world population (Reykjavík would be down to the south).
Also, you can't just consider temperature without humidity. The way you feel about temperature depends hugely on the humidity levels in the air. This article is a very simple analysis, it's a lot more complex than that if you want to make reasonable choices.
My personal preference is definitely for colder temperatures than most other people would like.
I didn't include humidity, precipitation, wind, etc., mostly because I threw this together in an hour or so and didn't intend for it to be a "serious" analysis, just a novelty.
>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.
Or you have different opinions than most people, for example I tend to really dislike summer in most places because I dislike hot weather more than I dislike cold weather, even here in Denmark I dislike summer.
My takeaway from reading Grænlendinga saga and Eiríks saga rauða was that Iceland is where you went when you got kicked out of Norway for killing too many people, and Greenland is where you went when you got kicked out of Iceland for killing too many people.
climate change, man-made or otherwise, and the need to adapt pushed humans beyond the conventional borders of their tribes/clans. however, the precipitating event on the move from the mainland was a lot of murder.
I think the edition I read mentioned that the Norse society in Greenland dwindled to nothing because of an inability to adapt to the conditions created by the Little Ice Age; sounds like this podcast has the same idea.
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.
Yes, that also immediately focussed my attention… We have friends from Iceland and I have since added Reykjavik to my weather app — to feel good that weather there is even more miserable than where I currently am, wherever that may be.
An obvious topic that seems missing from “good weather” is the amount and duration of rainfall.
The starting point for temperature and humidity should be the thermal comfort zone on a psychometric chart [0]. Wind can be considered in this too (see the 'natural ventilation' section). Hours of sunshine and rainfall should be separately measured.
The model is clearly simplistic, but if you made me write out my ideal range of temperatures through the year, Reykjavik is perhaps a few degrees too cold month by month. Centering on freezing for the winter, just warm enough for a jacket during the summer, it's just about ideal. Wind isn't great though, I'll give you that.
> A more appropriate methodology would take into account wet bulb temperatures,
Are there any recommendations for accurate API accessible wet-bulb temperatures across the world?
I've been looking at this website for India[1] during the heatwave and I'm not sure whether its accurate. Also, is there any reproducible DIY project to measure wet bulb temperature with a digital output for daily use.
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.)
Fair enough, and that's a reasonable question for the broader topic of "livability" (which as I'm sure you know there are global rankings for), but I personally wasn't considering "crime rates" as part of "weather".
"Partly cloudy. Medium (40%) chance of burglary, most likely later in the evening. Light winds becoming south to southeasterly 15 to 20 km/h during the morning."
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.
The author's model doesn't really say that Reykjavik is a good option. From my understanding, the graph shows the cities which have less variation than all cities colder than them.
Are you implying the IS/LM curve is representative of the trends seen in macroeconomic data? (And not a normative description of what a select group of people think the economy “should” look like?)
I’d be interested to hear more about why, since you say my claim has no basis.
If you don't have a snowy winter, you probably have a blistering hot summer. I can always get a beefier winter jacket for the cold but in the heat, there are only so many layers I can take off before being arrested.
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 walking or cycling, you're constantly in danger of slipping, and it's much harder to control and stop your car. And obviously if you live where it snows, you have to switch between summer and winter tyres twice a year in order to deal with it. Haven't heard of people switching between tyres because it rains.
If you're walking and it snows, you basically want to wait until someone ploughs the roads and then carpet bombs it with grit. Grit that will stay around when the snow melts and has to be cleaned up. And when they clean up the grit, it kicks up a bunch of dust and you get to breathe it in.
I don't think the elderly start falling and breaking their bones whenever a rainy season starts somewhere, but they most definitely do when it starts snowing. The couple of times that I've hurt myself in the past years have been because of snow and ice. My grandma got put in a wheelchair after breaking her leg in icy stairs.
That snow also has to be stored somewhere, so the sides of roads, sidewalks, parking lots, will all be full of massive piles of snow that will obviously eat away space that you could otherwise use. A whole sidewalk might turn into a one-person wide path.
If you're driving and it rains, it'll wipe off pretty easy. If it snows, it wipes off way worse. And if it's heavy snow, it will actually get stuck in the wipers and basically make the wipers useless. Obviously heavy rain is also an issue for visibility, but at least your wipers won't stop working.
And when spring comes, the snow melts and everywhere it wet for weeks. And since it usually fluctuates above and below 0°C, that water will freeze, melt, freeze, melt, freeze, melt, which is once again a shitty experience for all road users.
There's so many downsides to snow that I can't probably think of all of them right now.
I think it really depends. Here (northern Germany) you don't really get a lot of snow. So a bit of snow & the accompanied very dry weather is significantly nicer than the cold, damp ~0-5c rain you'd otherwise get in winter. The snow usually doesn't pile up high enough to really be a problem.
So the choice here is "slightly below 0 with a bit of snow" or "slightly above 0 with rain". It's not like crazy canadian levels of "a meter of snow and -30c" type situation.
It's possible, but it's still more difficult and dangerous. I have cycled in Finland in the snow, and it is objectively worse than in the dry or wet (albeit better than it is here in the UK).
For example, cycling across parks or crossing between lanes, there's usually the odd snow drift or edge between the ploughed lanes. If you're not careful, you can lose traction going across those or even it can be frozen solid and you can hit it like a kerb. Then when it's just starting to get cold, before the streets are being gritted, you're much more vulnerable to black ice patches.
Even on a well ploughed, gritted surface, the grip is still nowhere near comparable to the rain. As a bonus, the grit is really harsh on your bike's drivetrain, so you have to wash your bike thoroughly every time you ride.
I don't know how many times I have been linked this video, but it is several, and I imagine almost all of them have never actually cycled in Finland during the winter. But I have, for many years, and I can tell you that it does in fact suck!
If the cycle paths are not plowed, you basically have no forward momentum, and even if you manage to cycle in it, your bike will refuse to go straight, especially when the snow is wet. And if they're plowed, they're still slippery to a point that wet asphalt could never be. Ever had to hard stop a bicycle on the snow because a car pulled in front of you? Not fun.
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.
The Mediterannean seaside. The french riviera, Italy, Croatia. I spent lots of time in Spain (Valencia): way too warm in the summer IMO (too much south) and the spanish kinda build fugly buildings along the entire coast, ruining it (compared to France, the difference is staggering).
Here on the french riviera / Cote d'Azur I get to type this while watching the sea and I get my kid to the village's school while driving through the vineyeards. Beach is a three minutes walk.
I'd say that lots of poets/writers/actors/oligarchs (!)/etc. kinda figured this out a long time ago.
Sure, it gets a bit wild in july/august when all the tourists and billionaires come in the area and population goes 5x to 10x but it makes things fun.
During the winter you may get below zero temperatures but it's highly uncommon (the sea regulates both summer and winter) and, anyway, even when that happen, you can still have days where you can then eat lunch outside.
Internet ain't staggering yet but I can get a 4G battery-powered router (because why not, it's 70 EUR) and a 15 EUR / month data plan SIM that can do 80 GB per month while waiting for fiber (it's coming, 18% of my district already has fiber).
I agree this area (mediterranean coast) is one of the best in the world. There are nuances between countries: Italy has arguably the best food, Spain has the best weather, France has a combination of these two, good food and good weather.
In my case I went for Spain because I don't like to feel the cold, ever. I like to be outdoors all year, plus villas cost a fraction of what they cost in France or Italy. You can easily buy a completely new build with a pool in a nice area for 300.000€.
How expense is real estate along the French Riviera? I loved going there as a kid though, so can totally see it being an ideal climate if you're able to afford it.
> 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.
Yeah, not surprising to see Dublin surface in a good weather list built off temperatures alone, and yet the weather is piss poor for 49/52 weeks a year.
Of the places I've been Dublin has the most stable weather except perhaps Canary islands, but the difference is that Dublin has stable and shitty weather while Canary islands have stable and nice.
I currently live in Dublin, I think you are exaggerating quite a bit.
There are many reasons not to live in Dublin (poor housing quality / price, high cost of living, poor public transport, crime, etc) but the weather is absolutely not on that list.
Dublin has about 130 rainfall days each year, and most of those are in the winter. Most days are mild and dry. The weather is warm and pleasant enough to enjoy water sports year-round. I spend most of my recreation time during the winter in a wetsuit without a hood.
We don't get heavy snow, extreme cold/heat, hurricane force winds, or flooding. Overall, I think the weather here is better than most people give it credit for.
For me the problem with Ireland's weather is the lack of sunshine. It gets about 1500 hours of sunshine a year, compared to 2500 in New York and over 3000 in California. Growing up in Ireland I didn't identify this as a problem, but after moving to the US I realized that lots of sun, even on freezing days, is just so nice.
the city center and surrounding area is very well connected, but Dublin has a large, sprawling suburban area which while connected, has very infrequent connections.
the public transit services also disappears for almost all intended purposes at night, which is weird for a very international capital with such a vibrant night life. and taxis often refuse courses outside the inner city, albeit that has been changing with ubers and whatnot.
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.
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).
Yeah I came here to say the same. Medellin has some of the nicest weather of anywhere I've ever been, and it's like that all year long.
As a New Yorker, I personally like some variation of the seasons, but I guess if I lived in Medellin I could always head up to the Caribbean coast for some beach weather.
> Well, that's oceanic vs. continental climate for you: a large mass of water nearby
Toronto is right on Lake Ontario which, at least for the old city, moderates weather a lot compared to just 100-200 km north of the city. Things can change quite a bit by the time you get to Lake Simcoe, or to the west (Guelph-London-Owne Sound triangle).
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 me is the rainy season in the summer.
Currently in San Diego with the windows and doors open, enjoying the slightly cool air coming in. Great place to live and seems like more tech companies are moving down. Sadly the housing and rent are becoming increasingly inaccessible.
I applaud the San Diego Water Authority's efforts to diversify their sources. The Carlsbad desalination plant receives the most local coverage, but it's the investments in reclamation that will be vital in the coming decades.
Yeah I think no question San Diego has the best weather of CA, followed by maybe Santa Barbara. South Bay LA (on the coast, not to be confused with South Bay, Bay area) is also usually really great and consistent year-round but if you go inland at all the weather can be dramatically different.
But you also get all the air pollution from the port of LA/LB, so thats why prices don't necessarily reflect the access like they do over in redondo beach or down in OC. Can't do anything about much of it either. When the city wanted to remove that breakwater recently that pins water pollution to the beach and killed the surf scene when they erected it decades ago, the navy said no, should they ever need to load explosives into battleships near downtown long beach.
I personally find SF Bay Area weather terrible, terrible. SF has the same weather year round and it is as follows:
* Uncomfortably warm during the day
* Uncomfortably cold during the night
* A lot of unpredictable and long-running showers, rain and fog
* A lot of cold wind year-round (especially summer, see below)
I found the following quote by Mark Twain very accurate:
> The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
I also personally experienced that, although summers and winters in SF have the same weather (as explained above) somehow summers tend to be colder especially during night and in shades.
It doesn't really make sense to talk about "SF Bay Area weather" given that most days there's a 10-30 degree difference between the coldest and warmest parts of the region. If you're near the coast in the summer, a typical "warm day" is mid-to-high 60s, while it's 75-80 in Oakland/Berkeley and 90s in Walnut Creek.
I lived in west SF (near Golden Gate Park/Presidio) for 2 years and I can count the days it was "uncomfortably warm" on one hand.
It's not really the same year round either. Summer is by far the windiest and foggiest season, which is why it feels cold despite a higher base temp (but again, depends where you are).
The Wikipedia page the post's author linked to has weather by month. I confirmed that SF had the coldest average temp in June and July. Mark Twain's apocryphal quote is backed by data.
I live in SF, and agree, it's quite rare when it is too hot during the day. It seems like the gp poster was referring to the SF Bay Area rather than SF. I work in the South Bay and while I hated the pre-pandemic commute, the warm spring/summer/fall weather (and Asian food) were the two redeeming factors. SF's winters were slightly milder than the mild South Bay winters.
As someone else pointed out, the South Bay of Los Angeles has better weather than pretty much anywhere else, at least in California (it is similar to the Mediterranean and Redondo Beach is known for its "Hollywood Riviera").
Supposedly Stanford was founded in Palo Alto after Leland Stanford Jr. hired a cartographer to look around the US to find the city with the best weather (maybe it was most sunny days). A bit too warm for my liking but it's pretty darn nice.
It's amazing how one comment can have so much wrong with it. Long running showers? Downright hilarious. It doesn't rain a drop here 9 months out of the year. When it does, it barely qualifies as a sprinkle. You could walk outside for 20 minutes and not even get soaked. "Cold wind" is the breeze that makes every day feel amazing and fresh.
>I found the following quote by Mark Twain very accurate:
> > The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
He never said this.
I love it but any reason that gets people out of here is great for me.
I lived in Berkeley for about 5 years and this was my experience. Some comments here argue SF Bay Area has different climates in different regions. I never realized this, but if it's true it might explain gaps in my comment (I still fully stand by it. No long running showers? Did we even live in the same place? Berkeley famously has days-long powder-like showers! I was absolutely sick of them when I was living there.)
It's disingenuous to conflate SF's micro-climate with the entirety of the bay area. I agree that SF weather is insufferable, and I live in San Jose, which is entirely different ... and different again that the mid/upper-peninsula, or the Santa Cruz Mountains, or Marin, or Berkeley.
I think what a lots of folks don't understand until they're living here is exactly how different things are in different areas around the bay.
Generally speaking, I think south bay weather is approximately ideal, if it wasn't for fire season, which can ruin entire summers & falls depending.
Even within SF the weather can be pretty variable depending on what part of the city you're in. My friend living in Richmond has a nice view of the ocean, theoretically, but it's pretty cold and cloudy out in the yard for a lot of the year. I live in the southeast side of the city near Hunter's Point, and we probably have totally overcast days in the single digits, it's basically always sunny and 70 during the day. It does get really windy for a good chunk of the day for a good chunk of the year, but our warmest days are during the spring and summer when that dies down.
My guess is when the candlestick park / shipyard redevelopment happens this is going to be prime residential real estate, it's the best weather in the city IMO.
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.
The water is indeed cold most places here. But once you get down to Santa Barbara or better yet Long Beach you can find the occasional beach with warm water.
It's some combination of the very deep water being rather near shore and beaches that get directly blasted with the cold water streaming down the coast from Alaska. Remove/minimize those 2 factors and you can start finding warm water.
In San Diego around late August / early Sept you can find some really warm water relatively speaking. Particularly I used to enjoy going down to La Jolla cove and snorkeling around that time, with temps reaching up to 75f, which feels like bath water for the Pacific Ocean. Fairly certain I've experienced warmer than that a few times growing up.
Tokyo summers are miserable, as are the ones in Seoul and New York City. I have lived in all three and every July/August I wonder if this is the year I start cooling off in Bogota for a month.
all my american friends find it ridiculous, but yes, having lived my childhood in heat that you can see rising off the ground in the middle east, i love the pleasant 30-35C summers of NYC where i live now, especially when combined with the daylight deep into "night", like 8-9pm in June-August
San Diego is the gold standard for nice weather in California (and most of the planet), it is significantly better than the San Francisco area. I've lived in both and it isn't particularly close.
I couldn't disagree more, SF's weather is capricious (you always need a sweater, and be prepared to remove it and wear it back as you walk along the city and its many microclimates) and never warm enough (you like wearing shorts, flip flops, skirts, dresses, or just hang out in the evenings in the park? Nope, not going to happen). Because it's never warm enough, or cold enough, nobody has a heater or an AC, and when hot or cold days happen you're in for a real treat in your home.
I'm just saying that it's not for everyone, I'm looking to move out and weather is a big reason. I want to be able to drink and enjoy being in a park in the evening with my friends.
I hear "Japan has four seasons" a lot living there, but I don't get it. It definitely has summer. Leaves take 8 months to gradually fall from trees (if they fall at all) before summer starts again. There's no snow. And obviously there's no snowmelt or sudden greening in the spring.
You might be able to make the claim if your four seasons are "Summer, Typhoon season, Rainy season, Not-summer".
Obsessing over having 4 seasons is a theme that comes up in several cultures and I believe it is probably an ancient relic from when agrarianism was a nascent lifestyle upon which to base a civilization. Some nomadic cultures are similarly obsessed with the 4 cardinal directions.
There is snow in Japan close enough pretty much everywhere in the country if you are willing to drive a bit. For example, there's not much snow in Osaka but a lot in Kyoto and a lot around Nagoya, which are close enough.
Did you move there from SF? Do you work in tech? I'd be curious to hear how it is if so. My understanding is that they just announced they are going to let international travelers back in June.
Business visas are fine, I've had 5 people join my team from the US in the last few months. The June thing is for tourists, which are still not allowed in.
It's great as long as you work for a US tech company. The selection is pretty limited though. As far as companies with 'US adjacent salary bands'* you've got Amazon, Google, Indeed and now Doordash/Wolt (disclosure, I lead the eng org for DD/W in Tokyo). Also Stripe, I guess.
There are a number of Tier 2 companies which are pretty foreigner friendly but don't have the same level of pay - Rakuten, Line, etc. So if you're willing to compromise a little then there are a lot more options.
*By US adjacent, I don't mean literally as high as in the US, but maybe within 70-90% of a similar role in the states.
They haven't made a final decision yet regarding allowing international travelers, but as far as I understand it, they'll only allow tour groups first, and only the month after open up for tourists. (https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Japan-weighs-w...)
I moved from SF, I work in tech, it is awesome (but don’t work for a Japanese company unless you want to get underpaid and overworked, foreign firms are much better).
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-80°F. The best cities are the ones with the most good days.
Based on that, looking at US cities, the top and bottom ten are:
282 : San Diego, California
256 : Los Angeles, California
236 : Orlando, Florida
203 : Honolulu, Hawaii
202 : Jacksonville, Florida
199 : West Palm Beach, Florida
193 : Tampa St. Petersburg, Florida
189 : Asheville, North Carolina
179 : Charleston, South Carolina
...
92 : Duluth, Minnesota
91 : Casper, Wyoming
89 : Concord, New Hampshire
89 : Great Falls, Montana
87 : Sault Ste Marie, Michigan
80 : Caribou, Maine
76 : Salt Lake City, Utah
64 : Anchorage, Alaska
63 : Fairbanks, Alaska
41 : Juneau, Alaska
Makes sense, San Diego and anything on Hawaii is hard to beat for 'comfort'. If you account for outdoor diversity then moving bit north to Silicon Valley makes sense. Warmer than San Francisco, with great skiing 4 hours away.
Yeah, if you really want to pick a city by weather, you'd want to take into account more than just temperature. Amount of sunlight is important too, from cloud cover and day length based on latitude.
The code is too hacky to share. Basically, I got a CSV of daily average temperatures for a bunch of cities. I discarded all the rows except for ones in the US and within a single year.
Then, for each city, I just counted the number of days whose temperature was within a range.
I had to do a little massaging because for some reason Washington DC was double counted in there.
Yeah guys here like to joke about how we're having "Scottish" weather when it's raining, so it's funny to see Edinburgh (704mm/year) isn't really that much wetter than Prague (587mm/year)
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.
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.
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
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.
I grew up in Toronto and lived in Oakland for the past 6 years. Other than some smokey summers weather is near perfect. Very mild "winters", beautiful and sunny summers (much less fog than the coast or Berkeley) with only a few days >30C. Low humidity most of the year. I'm in Carson City now and its colder/hotter, still no humidity.
I was born an raised in Oakland. Live in the East Bay. Oakland has amazing weather. There are social challenges it faces now that give it substantially reduced marks.
> We’ll ignore any other weather characteristics like humidity, rain, wind, diurnal temperature difference, etc.
Ha! So basically you're ignoring most of what weather is. I'm surprised Amsterdam (my current location) didn't end on top. I mean if you ignore the rain and the wind (and the sunshine hours) it's actually not that bad...
Another interesting measure for these purposes is "heating degree days" and "cooling degree days", i.e. how much the outside temperature varies from indoor temperature.
One of my former coworkers who lived in San Diego said that people there complain whenever the temperature outside is different than the temperature inside, and sure enough, it's the lowest by summed heating and cooling degree days in the US.
that may be true...but as someone who's lived in San Diego before, I can say that the weather and pretty much everything else there, except the traffic, is pretty awesome.
Don't forget to include the cost-of-living and the taxes, along with the traffic.
The weather is quite nice -- but if you really like/want to experience distinct seasons throughout the year, then the lack of variability may leave you dissatisfied.
Great weather, but Bangalore (tshirt all year around) doesn't make the cut? makes me suspect something is off with the data or analysis. (Perhaps it's the anchoring on 9 celcius? that's chilly.)
From what I see in the news India will soon be 60 degrees and death all year round because of global warming so it should probably not make many lists :(
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but India isn't a tiny country with a single temperature zone. Cities like Bangalore have great weather year long. The real problem is dust and pollution.
The cyclone is also bringing a 20C May this time. The past few days were pretty damp and cold.
This week was expected to be the hottest on record for bengaluru but rain saved us :)
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 expected this analysis to readily propose a city like this.
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.
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:
As a Norwegian, I'm rather used to cold and wind. I was once in Johannesburg in late-winter-early-spring. It's one of the coldest experiences of my life! Indeed, the outdoor temperature wasn't too bad, but the wind was constant and what the fuck why are there like centimeter-wide gaps around doors where the wind just comes howling in so that you have to wear a jacket indoors?!
I am Canadian, I lived in Joburg for 2yrs. You are bang on: huge gaps in doors, windows that can't fully close and uninsulated homes. It was bloody cold in the winter, with my indoor temp being around 10C in the morning! And of course, all sorts of creepy crawlies appearing in my living room (scorpions, prawns) at random times. Loved the cloudless skies, however.
> I am Canadian, I lived in Joburg for 2yrs. You are bang on: huge gaps in doors, windows that can't fully close and uninsulated homes. It was bloody cold in the winter, with my indoor temp being around 10C in the morning! And of course, all sorts of creepy crawlies appearing in my living room (scorpions, prawns) at random times. Loved the cloudless skies, however.
I live in JHB, have been for most of my life. Still not used to how cold it is in the winter.
But the creepy crawlies? C'mon - you're in Africa, what did you expect? In my experience, the benefit of moving to JHB from the east coast was the lack of creepy crawlies!
I grew up on the coast, and there's no end to the wildlife (including creepy crawlies ... maybe the occasional leopard).
The east coast of South Africa is a pain to live in; monkeys frequently raid the garden, large, flying cockroaches get into any food, people will frequently find frogs and/or crabs getting into their pools, snakes frequently getting into the house ...
I'm from a place that (I'm told) has similar weather, and it's common for people from colder climates to complain about lack of insulation. The quick answer is, here you don't have winters that are as cold, therefore developers can get away with shoddy construction without killing its inhabitants... so they do. If you built something like this in Toronto, people would literally freeze to death inside, so it can't be done.
Also, take into account that spring/summer is warmer, and construction practices also have to take this into account.
According to the wikipedia article they jump and shoot ink and are generally very annoying, to the extent that there's an april fools day story that they were genetically modified...
> 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 ago I had an opportunity to relocate to CT, and realised that with the amount of constant strong wind it gets, I might be able to live completely off-grid using 4 - 6 wind turbines on the roof of the house.
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 (it's nothing like London, Dublin or Seattle in that regard) instead, storms bring strong wind and rain very few days, which abates and clears before the next cold front. I find this preferable to e.g. London's "long months of grey drizzle and dark at 4pm". It's certainly more eventful.
Wind speed is also not constant, and depends on where exactly you are, some areas are sheltered, some spots are "high-sided vehicles will blow over when there's a storm".
Weather seems like the classic the grass is greener elsewhere. I see Edinburgh ranks well which I live near. Had also lived near Toronto and can vouch for the less extreme temperature variance in Scotland. The seasons are less well defined here, it's quite normal to have all 4 seasons in a day.
In the high desert of the US southwest (6000'/1800m and above), it is not unusual to see diurnal temperature swings of 30F/16C or close to it. It's completely normal for at least 2 seasons a year to need an insulated jacket in the morning and evening, a light sweater just after and before the jacket is removed/added, and a t-shirt or similar for the middle of the day. Of course, the chance of rain is close to zero outside of any monsoon season that may or may not occur.
I'm in the southwest at 5000', and if anything you're understating it. To choose convenient arbitrary samples: Tomorrow 40°F low / 82°F high (42°F delta); Saturday 45°F low / 90°F high (45°F delta). Even 60°F swing isn't unheard of.
Ditto: I'm in the southwest (SE AZ) at 4700': Tomorrow 58°F low / 90°F high (32°F delta); Saturday 61°F low / 94°F high (33°F delta). An approximate 30°F diurnal swing is pretty much the norm year-round here. Your comment about precip and monsoon season applies too.
Interesting cultural difference on what is "nice" weather.
For me, a good city should have seasonality, that is the "joy of life". The changing of the seasons and the cycle through life is what makes me happy. Snowy winter days, the springtime change, endlessly long summer days, and the first cool autumn breeze as the colours change.
Part of the problem of where I live is the seasons of Winter and Summer seem to be extending and the time for Spring and Fall (The best seasons) appear to be shrinking.
100% agreed. I enjoy cold winter with proper snow (~ -10°C), mild spring and autumn with rains and thunderstorms (~ 10-20°C), and summer that doesn't get too hot (ideally not too many days above 30°C). I really can't stand regions that only have one or two seasons and very little change or "gray months".
When I meet people from other countries I like to ask about the weather where they are from.
Two of the best places I've heard of that sound nice coming from people who are form there.
Monaco/Nice France. Summer can be quite warm but not winters are moderate about 15C (which to them was a cold winter). Really anywhere on the shores of the Mediterranean would be nice.
The other is Kigali, Rwanda I asked someone what it was like they said summer about 26C and winter about 15C - very stable, very little variation.
For both of those places no hurricanes, tornadoes, no snow, no wild temperature changes.
San Diego has the best weather I've ever experienced. I've been there at different times of the year too. I don't live there and don't have any motivation to say that other than just being honest. I don't have any data to support my claim but it's not even mentioned in this analysis. I wonder what criteria ruled it out.
I did a similar study many years ago then actually moved to the city. It was wonderful, the climate was perfect for me. Moderate all year, low humidity, low wind and rain.
Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico was the answer for me. I will move back there when the kids are older.
Basically quite a few places in Mexico. La Ciudad de México or Ensenada for me. I intensely love Mexico City but Ensenada is where I'm moving to. Entirely for health insurance reasons. I will be there tomorrow hooray.
There's Guanajauto, but also Querétaro, San Mig, León. The central highlands are big and agreeable.
People here love San Diego... I know San Diego really well, and I think Ensenada beats it in every way. San Diego is like a little brother to LA. It sure seems like it would be great to live there, and I suppose if you are desperate to spend quality time sitting in your car crawling in traffic it is ideal, but that's not for me.
Proximity to the US border. Medicare, particularly. I am no expert even though I have spent a lot of time on it. It seems a double cancer survivor with partner much the same is going to have a hard time getting insured any other way.
This is so very true...
Funny anecdote: whilst deciding where to pursue a PhD, the Univ. of Edinburgh website stated: "If you are deciding based on weather, don't come here."
The Scottish weather jokes are really tired at this point, I come from Manchester and when I lived in Edinburgh I got the "How do you like the Scottish weather?", but the weather in Edinburgh is pretty great compared to a lot of the UK, especially the western parts.
Also Iceland/Reykjavík in the top ranking makes me agree with you. I went to school with a girl from Iceland and she told me school was cancelled on days with nice weather in Iceland.
A location where every sunny day becomes an instant holiday shouldn't end up at the top of a list like that. Cool website and demo of R nonetheless I guess.
This was the subtle joke in "Anchorman" with Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) the weatherman with an IQ of 48. You don't have to be smart to predict "78 and sunny" every day.
No Bangalore on the list!? Of course I'm partial to the city being my home base. But really, having seen and lived in a diverse climatic places, Bangalore comes close to being the perfect climate. No snow but one can't be too greedy :-)
Shameless plug: weatherspark.com has a great compare feature that is extremely useful when evaluating the relative merits of a given location's climate. See the following comparison page between Algiers and LA:
I made a free website called City Filter that aggregates a lot of data from cities around the world and lets you filter them by different criteria including temperature and rain, but also safety, development, population, distance from your location, etc.
If your goal is to identify your favorite cities based on your own criteria, you will definitely like it:
I traveled there for work once in February and it was sunny and high 60s the entire week. I could only think of how grossly unfair it was that people were allowed to live like that. I saw a guy rollerblading with no shirt on.
As a kid, I used to visit my cousins in San Diego, and two summers in a row we had heat waves.
Even though I loved my cousins, the humidity/heat was enough for me to beg to go home.
I remember feeling the fog on the Golden Gate bridge going north, and I was just relieved.
I helped a friend move from Joplin, MO. ten years ago. I actually brought my bicycle because daily exercise helped with my anxiety/depression.
I got off the plane, and that thick moist hot air hit me. I knew there will be no exercise.
My best buddy had a big 7-11 Big Gulp drink in his hand for me. I asked if it's always this hot.
He said this is actually mild.
We were both very broke, and figured I'd get used to the heat. My job was to move him from Joblin to San Rafael. We were beyond co-dependants, and best friends for years.
He took me to his house. It was a small home his father had build in the 40's. He didn't have money to air condition the entire house, but he put up sheets on the kitchen in place of doors. He had one window air conditioner, and that is where we lived for two weeks.
He was getting over his mother's passing.
In the morning he said, "Just trust me on how to survive the heat.".
We would basically just hydrate all day, and look for air conditioning. He smoked heavily, and was just better with the heat than me. He was much older than me, but I was a fat boy.
(I noticed the successful, productive Missourian's went from air conditioned homes, to air conditioned cars, to air conditioned offices. The poor just sweltered.)
Hopefully that helps the fires this year when it eventually gets hot, at the very least! It's nice to not have to worry about drought, as well. (That's a huge reason why I moved to Seattle from SF.)
> Seattle has great weather. Less rain than Midwest
I know someone who had a depressive episode after moving to Seattle because, "it's raining. It's just a thick, settling mist. But it hasn't stopped, for 100 days"
It gets too hot a couple weeks every year. 90F+ for days and even in the evening it doesn't drop that much which is rough when most people don't have AC.
I am here as well. It looks like La Nina this year. Even though it has rained a lot the weather is still incredible. I originally come from Cape Town and Medellin is the most perfect weather I have ever lived in.
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).
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
Great points. Thank you. Perhaps my friend's perspective is tempered by his being native to Seattle. He mentioned that he thought Montevideo was the southern hemisphere match to Seattle. Hmm.
This only looks at one dimension: temperature. There are other dimensions to look at:
- Humidity, or rather: Dew Point. 22ºC / 72F feels awesome or nasty depending on whether dewpoint is 10ºC or 21ºC. Anything above 16ºC is generally unpleasant.
- Sunshine. Many overcast days can do a number on our well being, but some people actually prefer the softer light.
- Rainfall. Some prefer more on the dry side, others more on the lush side. Again, it's a personal preference.
- Variety throughout the year. Some of us actually enjoy the diversity of seasons while others prefer constance.
Cusco and La Paz, etc, are highland cities. If you are not accustomized to living at 2km+ altitude you would be miserable and may get health problems and/or depression. This just shows how bad oligoparametrical models are.
This seems to miss out the broader dimensions of "nice weather".
For example, 39F/3.8C on a cloudy winter day on the US east coast is entirely different than the same temperatures in the (intense) sun and low humidity of the high desert in the US southwest.
Conversely, 78F/25.5C in May in the US southwest on a windy day is totally miserable to be out in, because the wind can hit sustained bursts of 25mph/40kmh with much higher gusts, whereas the same temperature on a sunny May day in London might be paradise.
My gut feeling tells me high altitude southern cities are stable around “room temperature” (like Mexico City and La Paz) but if one doesn’t mind 30C for a few weeks, then of course a lot more cities in the Mediterranean, California, Australia etc are also in play.
I take it the person writing the article prefers anything, including a constant drab rain, to ever having -15C or +30C.
> I take it the person writing the article prefers anything, including a constant drab rain, to ever having -15C or +30C.
That's about right. I don't mind -15C so much but don't care for anything below about -20C or above 20C. I don't like rain either but I think I'd put up with it for a narrow enough temperature band.
You'd probably want to factor in precipitation and humidity as well. Also, having lived in the tropics for a long time, having no variation also gets a little boring after a while, although it is nice to never having to pay attention to the weather forecast.
Boston is the land of extremes. The winters are cold, windy, full of snow, and too long. The summers are absurdly humid and hot. The fall is so beautiful it's the most fall you have ever seen. Perhaps spring is a tad mundane, I'll admit.
Boston (and Massachusetts itself) has the most character of any state, and the people are quite unique in various capacities. It is #1 in biotech, education, and healthcare and #2 in finance and software. For the size of its population it punches well above its weight in importance.
To circle back, I think the weather has something to do with it. Tough weather makes tough people. Locals can be gruff at first but if you learn how to break through they are far nicer than New Yorkers.
I always love to see data analysis on tolerable weather. I've done a lot of research on weather in the US and its a perpetually challenging problem. There are a small list of cities where its consistently nice (Solely in california and miami), and a larger list of cities that are have 4 nice seasons. But the data will never tell you the full story - Denver doesn't rank incredibly well in the data but the winters are mild and the summers surprisingly hot because its always sunny and closer to the sun. SLC ranks well, but has unbearable smog. It seems that every city has caveats that can't be captured in the data. Portland seemingly has great weather.. when its not raining.
Miami has some weird weather patterns where it’s always humid, but the temperature never reaches triple digits so you don’t have the crazy hot muggy unbearable summers like the Midwest.
>Denver doesn't rank incredibly well in the data but the winters are mild and the summers surprisingly hot because its always sunny and closer to the sun.
Difference in distance to the sun is completely negligible. Maybe you’re thinking of UV index?
UV index is definitely a more accurate representation. I had to look it up because people always say it’s the elevation, which turns out to be partly true.
The link below says an increase of 2% for every 1000 feet, so most of Denver gets 10% more uv index because it’s closer to the sun (more accurately higher elevation/less atmosphere).
Well, there’s less air between you and the sun. Most of that 94 million miles are void of anything blocking/filtering light. The last 10 miles aren’t. It likely makes a difference if it only 8-9 miles.
Your algorithm should probably return places like Lisbon or Nice, which have nice and sunny weather all year round, but not too hot summers. And not Reykjavik, where you need functional clothing (water and wind proof) all year round.
For having lived in Dublin, La Paz and spent quite some time in Reykjavik, there is something really wrong with the data as suggested in earlier posts. I find European cities like Cork and in Brittany would fit to what he is seeking.
Interesting to see him zero in on Cusco and Bogota. Both are equatorial(esque) cities. Bogota is at 8,000 ft and Cusco is at ~11,000 ft, and both have sunset within ~30 minutes of 6pm for 300+ days a year. Cusco actually gets hot, but Bogota reminds me a lot of san francisco. It rarely gets above 65F in the day time, and 45-55F at night is pretty common. Bogota is a Real City with a population of 8 million and daily flights to Madrid (Spain, Europe) with full suite of services. Medellin is about a 4-6 hour drive from Bogota and has a very San Diego-esque climate year round.
Apart from not taking into account for wind and precipitation (as has been mentioned in other comments) the analysis should also look into the average amount of sunshine (or the average amount of cloud cover) as well as look into seasonal exposer to the sun based on latitude.
Reykjavík can go weeks without a break in the cloud cover, with howling winds shacking the concrete bunker you live in.
Sure its probably not more than -10°C outside with windchill, but you'll feel your body complaining about your life choices pretty quickly.
In 3 words, the medieval warm period. It has been suggested as the reason settlers were able to get the initial foothold.
The island's lowlands were also densely covered in birch forest when discovered in the late 800s, so there was plenty of wood to be had which would have helped.
Grazing animals would have had an easy time, as can be seen with the size of the sheep population and the deforestation effect they had on the island. The wool produced was a big part of how the settlers survived winter.
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.
I would use:
- temperatures around 15 degrees, so a place that went from lows of 5 in the winter to highs of 25 in the summer
- rarely overcast. Growing up in Porto I don’t really have a problem with sunny days or days where it is actually raining. The bane of my existence are the misty, damp, sprinkly, overcast days
- no snow
It’s a shame that I have to go to Berlin to get a good start on my career, otherwise I’d love to stay here
Data alone is not enough. Or, you should have lots of it, and use and weigh it properly.
Temperature, humidity, winds, sunlight, duration and intensity of rain, clouds... The list goes on and on.
And what about pollution? Milan is one of the most polluted cities in Europe, and people wouldn't guess it. You could have nice weather, be outside, and not enjoy breathing (Milan is still ok, there are much worse places like New Delhi).
100% I'm in Melbourne so summers are usually a dry heat that can go into the mid-high 30's often. Send me up to the Gold Coast where the humidity is much greater and I'll struggle in the high 20's low 30's
Mmm that's difficult to define for example in Le Havre (an harbour NW of France) the average temperature is quite consistent due to the sea proximity but the weather is often very variable (and the weather forecasts aren't reliable): keep your sun hat AND your umbrella with you..
While near Paris the weather is more stable during a day, but from day to day the temperature variations are higher..
Correct. Hasn't been near 30C in Toronto this week (source: me, Toronto resident). This person could solve a lot of his problems with Toronto weather by moving close to the lake. It's generally a few degrees cooler in the summer, and warmer in the winter. Having four distinct seasons is nice, although fall (the best season, IMO) is way too short and winter is a bit too long.
I think being near the lake is definitely nicer in the summer, and probably winter too, as it moderates the temperature. On the other hand in the spring and fall, since the water temperature can be so much colder than the air, it can be quite cold and breezy by the lake, and nice and warm away from the lake.
Running this with wet bulb/dry bulb temperatures would interesting.
In our spring/summer it can get into the mid thirties (celsius), where I live, which is definitely hot, but it typically comes with minimal humidity.
Whereas our biggest city might hit 25 degrees max, but the humidity feels to me like the entire city had a shower and didn't turn on the extractor fans.
Somewhere like Dubai can have pleasant weather for 7 months, 99% of the time. And very bad weather for 4 months, 95% of the time.
Where I live might have objectionable weather on 70% of the days, but they are more spread out and not as extreme, and the plants can tolerate it. Dubai would still win on "number of pleasant days".
You're never going to find a perfect city. If it's not the weather that bugs you, it's something else. Don't spend your time trying to find the perfect fit. Rather, spend your time on accepting the world as it is and adapting to it. Then you'll be happy anywhere, anytime.
I've also been thinking about relocating due to climate (and projected future climate). I came across this website which shows condenses daily and annual temperatures into a sort of sparkline graph.
What is "nice weather" really varies by person. Personally, I would love something where the temperature didn't vary a lot, it is damp, but most importantly, it is overcast/dark as much as possible. Hence my ideal locale would be the Pacific Northwest.
I think people are a bit too critical here, as people's view on weather are different, i.e. utility functions are different.
As a person living in Edinburgh though, I can say the weather is not too bad, but certainly could be tad warmer without being uncomfortable.
https://weatherspark.com/ has wonderful visualizations of many different aspects of location-specific weather, including humidity, temperature, wind, and precipitation, and clouds.
There is a strong correlation between rich and good weather. Amsterdam a city being rich for many hundreds years has pretty good weather. almost all milt weather cities are rich. Whereas warm climates are a recipe for poorness
I'd be careful making such statements without data. For example, one could wonder if what you observe is a correlation, but not a causation: cities that are close to the sea are rich, as seas allow easy trade. And cities that are close to the sea have a good climate, obviously.
I was just reading the Wiki page for Bogota yesterday and was like "damn, that city has my favorite kind of weather and it barely changes". Is it a good place to live in otherwise?
Lower variability isn't a very good indicator of good weather at all. Humidity, median vs. average yearly temp, annual sunshine, and precipitation are more useful IMHO.
Humidity's the thing I have trouble finding good info about. Weather maps of humidity don't seem to do a good job of matching with what's actually perceived. But 85F and humid feels a hell of a lot worse than 95F and dry, so as far as Summer (and to some extent, Spring and Fall) characteristics go, I'd consider humidity by far the most important factor in whether Summer's basically pleasant, or completely miserable.
Funny, Cusco may be a good candidate based on low variable temperature during the year but my recollection is that it has high variable temperature throughout a 24 hour period.
this is most stable weather not nicest ... "We’ll ignore any other weather characteristics like humidity, rain, wind, diurnal temperature difference, etc."
I’ve lived 12 years in the bay area and spent quite a bit of time in Chile (mostly Santiago, but other places too). Both are great and pretty close to ideal.
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, Australia (at least, most of the time - they've had an extraordinary run of flooding rains, recently). 70 degree Fahrenheit maximums in the winter, 82 in the summer, warm-water beaches, sea breezes to take the edge off the humidity - and there's mountains next door you can recreate in during summer to take the edge off. What more could you possibly want, except possibly snow if you're one of those weirdos who likes the stuff?
A more appropriate methodology would take into account wet bulb temperatures, rainfall amounts, hours of sunshine, and wind (aside from its effect on wet bulb temperature a howling gale is unpleasant in its own right).
Still, given the poster's starting point was Toronto...well...