Hacker News Reader

Comment by rectang | Hacker News Reader

"Fleeing California" articles are evergreen on HN. I can never tell if there's anything new, or if it's just people voting up the usual nothingburger, presumably to express displeasure with California culture or governmental policies.

View on HN

They’re evergreen anywhere you find people who low-key wish they could live in CA but can’t. It’s weird; just enjoy your state and do the best to make it better.

Truly don’t get why people who don’t live in CA have so many opinions about it. Most states have problems on par with their economic power and population size; not much more too it than that but “hurr liberal policies are gonna ruin the whole country!” get the low-hanging clickbait (RevContent, etc.)

It's because CA has perfect weather which is the one thing that is completely impossible to replicate anywhere else.

The 50 square miles of SF has perfect weather, if you're not put off by cold and clingy fog. The other 160,000 square miles is as much of a mixed bag as any other state (with the exception of Hawaii, which actually has perfect weather).

Agreed. And a big part of this is a person’s definition of perfect weather.

I’m in SoCal just coastal enough to not get very high highs, but lows rarely pass 55. But, if SF was exactly the same price, I’d prefer that weather by quite a bit (even though anywhere SF to TJ is leagues “better” - by my definition - than the weather of the state I moved from).

I just love that cozy but not-too-chilly climate of SF, ah. Perfect thinking/studying/hiking/reading weather for my tastes.

It depends on what you like to do outdoors I guess. I've lived in southern or northern california for almost 20 years and can pretty much run 365 days a year and bike almost that much. I HAVE run in snow storms in Illinois and North Carolina and heat waves in Houston and Austin, TX so my range of "comfort" is definitely a bit wider than the average person but in general the whole of California has near perfect weather IMO though it does get very hot as you go inland in the summer.

Yeah. Depending upon what you like, you can probably find just about your ideal weather somewhere in CA. The central valley is very hot. SF itself basically never gets hot but you have to sometimes deal with cold fog even in the middle of the summer. You have some of the hottest, driest weather on earth around Death Valley. You have snow in the mountains. Etc.

What you don't really have in general is seasons (except in the mountains). But otherwise, for whatever California's other faults, it's hard to complain too much about the weather if you can choose where you live.

> with the exception of Hawaii, which actually has perfect weather

Hawaii gets 70 inches of rain per year, and LA gets 15. While there's no denying the natural beauty of Hawaii, saying that it has perfect weather is a matter of personal taste.

> The 50 square miles of SF has perfect weather, if you're not put off by cold and clingy fog.

What does this even mean? SF is 7 miles in diameter, and the various foggy microclimates don't reach far beyond the city's perimeter (and most of the time they don't even reach Potrero Hill). Describing this as a 50 mile perimeter would imply that Palo Alto has a lot of fog, which couldn't be more wrong.

The land between San Diego and SF in the N-S direction and the I5 and the ocean in the E-W direction has what most people would describe as the perfect climate, with just enough variation to suit individual styles. If you prefer a slightly higher temperature you go further south within that area, and otherwise a bit further north. And if you really like the chill air, you step over from San Mateo to Daly City.

We can argue about all sorts of issues that negatively affect California (eg: taxes), but the weather is clearly a huge upside to living there.

> Hawaii gets 70 inches of rain per year, and LA gets 15.

That varies dramatically based on where you are in Hawaii. The prominent mountain ridges produce very sharp rain shadows; Hilo (on the windward side of the Big Island) gets 126" per year, but Kona (on the leeward side) is more like 19". Most people would live in the Honolulu region, which is on the windward (hence drier) side of Oahu.

> the windward (hence drier) side

I noticed this too late to edit the comment, but it should actually say "leeward" side, not "windward."

Talk about micro climates!

It's a bit hard to call it a microclimate when you're talking about places 60 miles apart, and the ring road peaks at ~2800' if you take the north way via Waimea or ~4000' if you take the south way via Kilauea, or ~6600' if you take the Saddle Road between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. There is, after all, a 13000' mountain in between the two sides of the Big Island.

> What does this even mean?

I hate to be pedantic, but you're misreading the parent post (they didn't say "diameter" nor "perimeter" and neither really makes sense in this context) and then being confrontational based on your misreading. You and the parent post both have good points otherwise, best to keep it a friendly discussion.

I missed the "square" in the "square mile" phrase and thought the OP was referring to a distance (hence my reference to Palo Alto) and not area - my bad.

> The 50 square miles of SF has perfect weather, if you're not put off by cold and clingy fog.

I'd say San Francisco has the worst weather of the area, nearly always cold and foggy as you say.

As soon as you go slightly south toward Silicon Valley or slightly north towards Santa Rosa the weather improves dramatically.

Personally, as someone who doesn't even live in the US, I find these discussions alluring because related topics like homelessness and NIMBY-vs-whatever are so interesting.

Other than that, the "don't bring CA to TX" angle is quite alien to an Australian as laws are fairly similar in each state here.

The United States is huge and you can easily divide it into multiple regions that have their own unique culture, their own distinct histories, and different ways of speaking, sometimes dramatically different.

Colin Woodard's book "American Nations" does a good job of explaining this [0], though at some point this book turns into a long rant about GWB and it's safe to put the book down at that point if you don't find that interesting.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united...

And yet at the same time, the regions are also remarkably similar in all the same ways. Someone born in California can fly to the heart of Tennessee and have a meaningful conversation with a stranger in their native language.

(It’s one of the reasons why I love the US)

I live in Chicago so I know that feeling. We’ve been on the cusp of dying since the 1970s.

Chicago, while not dead, is a fraction of what it used to be. While it used to be at the vanguard of US cities, when is the last time you’ve heard it mentioned in national news in a good way?

Not all cities end up like Detroit. Some just fade into irrelevance.

That's not what the doomsayers were predicting. They were expecting a detroit-style implosion since the 1970s, suggesting such an event was just a year or two around the corner.... for the last 45 years. Much different than "This city's influence will wane as other metros rise and grow"

Incidentally, Zillow has Chicago and the surrounding metro area posting the highest growth in home value (source: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/residential-real-estate/chic...)

Yet for whatever reason, new expensive skyscrapers keep dotting the Chicago skyline. Some death-spiral.

Feels like someone is pulling the strings here. Same thing happened a year or so ago with numerous articles about how robots and self-driving trucks were going to take all the blue collar jobs.

Ironically, a ton of SV companies have been working on ways to keep drivers employed (and possibly even better paid, plus a safer job closer to home).

Regularly overlooked when SV is being demonized for automating jobs though, naturally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com