Where Is the World’s Best Weather? (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Where Is the World’s Best Weather? (2020)

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53 pointsKaibeezy68 comments

I saw a documentary on Japanese TV on this topic. Or, actually, it might have been this reality TV show:

https://www.asahi.co.jp/konnatokoroni/

whose concept is that Japanese celebrities travel to various places in the world, often remote, to pay a surprise visit to some Japanese person living there.

Anyway, in this particular episode, a certain gentleman was visited who lives in some high altitude mountainous location in Vietnam, I think.

He chose to live there largely due to the ideal climate.

The idea is that one important characteristic of a "good" climate is that there are no swings in temperature: no seasons. OK, that constrains us to the tropics. (Or else, as a strawman argument, perhaps to the Arctic or Antarctica.) But it's hot and humid in the tropics, with rain. The solution: a high altitude location in the mountains at a tropical latitude: low lat, high alt. A high altitude location in the tropics still has no seasons, but is cooler and with less rain.

The gentleman said that he could go outside year round wearing the same light clothing. He also pointed out that the advantage is not just comfort; he was able able to grow vegetables all year round, without regard for seasons.

Given the variety of climates in Japan itself quite a few types could be experienced domestically:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Japan#Climate

The vast majority of tropical Mexico & Central America’s cities seem to be settled in this manner as well, it’s lovely.

I wonder if it’s a lack of rivers, islands, and ports that led to this vs Southeast Asia’s cities mostly being at sea level. Although Colombia has rivers & ports, and still is mostly settled in the mountains. Odd.

Most of European Coastal Mediterranean, (Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Albania, southern part of Croatia), including Portugal, San Diego, and anything close to the ocean in California (as long as it is not in the fog belt like San Francisco),

South Africa, and perhaps some parts of Australia and Latin America.

Basically, anywhere where it is sunny 'Mild Mediterranean' weather, that it is not too hot (North Africa is too hot for my taste).

Top Cities in Europe: Barcelona, Valencia, in Spain, Livornia, Rimini, Pisa, in Italy (Rome can get too hot), Marsseille, Nice in France, Durres, Vlora in Albania, (actually most of Albania has great weather), Dubrovnik in Croatia, Corfu, Patras, Selaniki in Greece), Lisbon and Porto in Portugal, etc...

This is the sunshine map of Europe. Light Orange areas are probably the best areas weather wise. If it is the bright Orange, then Coastal areas are still great, but inland might get too hot. Eg. Madrid, and Rome get too hot in the summer, but cities like Barcelona, or Niece in France are more moderate as they are coastal:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Europe_s...

+1 for that sweet Csa climate :)

> southern part of Croatia

That's where I live. Summers get much too hot to be called mild, but it's the winters that are annoying as hell. Everyone pretends that the cold doesn't exist, so insulation is terrible and so is heating unless you want to pay through the nose for electricity every month.

Seriously, winters were much better when I lived in the capital, which is continental and colder but has actual amenities to counter that.

I did have an opportunity to spend a month in Los Angeles on two occasions (in winter and fall) and the weather was fantastic.

Exactly this: if your house / environment is well adjusted to the circumstances it makes a much bigger impact on the overall experience then the average temperature.

Switzerland as in my example, is about as close to perfect as I have experienced. Yes we get snow in the winter, yes it get hotish (up to 38C.) in the summer, but the houses and streets and road services are all well capable of handling these fluctuations.

EDIT:

"In Bern, the summers are comfortable and wet, the winters are very cold, and it is partly cloudy year round. Over the course of the year, the temperature typically varies from -4°C to 24°C (in freedoms: 26°F to 76°F) and is rarely below -10°C or above 30°C. (14°F or above 86°F)"

From: https://weatherspark.com/y/56086/Average-Weather-in-Bern-Swi...

Folks need to appreciate lush vibrant green vegetation where frequent rain is encouraged ... perhaps motivated by lifelong hiking every few days ... so for me Mediterranean climate is way too dry and barren

Wallace Stegner:

"Dutton describes a process of westernization of the perceptions that has had to happen before the West is beautiful to us. You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time."

Much longer and more explanatory quote here:

https://bensonian.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/you-have-to-get-o...

I'm not against what he's saying, but green vegetation generally means a good source of water, which is handy to have:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_security

Indeed, but millions of humans have lived for millenia in places where grass does not grow easily. It's a different culture in so many important ways from the one found in areas with plentiful water, and has evolved over thousands of years to deal with "the world as it is".

> Indeed, but millions of humans have lived for millenia in places where grass does not grow easily.

And what were the populations of those communities? Did they have hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of individuals draining natural resources?

In recent times humans haven't really done as much accepting the "world as it is". We've tried to shoehorn ourselves into circumstances where we probably should not have. I am reminded of the episode of the cartoon King of the Hill where they visit Phoenix:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PYt0SDnrBE

> Basically, anywhere where it is sunny 'Mild Mediterranean' weather, that it is not too hot (North Africa is too hot for my taste).

I wouldn't object to living in that climate type (Csa, Csb), but I'd be worried about rainfall:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_climate

Personally I'd lean more towards Oceanic:

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

Still mild, with some seasonality. I do understand why some people wouldn't want all the cloudiness.

I got a chuckle out of seeing the U.K. Overseas Territories ranked 3rd. in the countries list, as it is comprised of fourteen territories spread from the Isle of Man to the British Antarctic Territory via the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas and the Indian ocean.

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

Well, when you consider the average…

WeatherSpark is my favorite platform for this question. Lots of data and look-a-like places. Highly recommended.

https://www.weatherspark.com/

Something this doesn't tell you is that summers in London for example are awful because our homes have historically been designed to trap heat.

Why -would- it tell you? If you live inside a refrigerator it would never be hot.

Remarkable how different the experience is on that website when you are not using an ad blocker.

WeatherSpark is great, probably my favorite weather website.

Is it me or is Mexico missing from his country ranking? ( https://leisurepurpose.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/countrycl... ) I was very curious to see where my country fell in that list.

If San Diego is on that list then Tijuana / Ensenada should be on it too

Weather is complicated. e.g. Taree (NSW, Australia) gets a 10 in the list of 129 cities with nearly perfect weather. But in summer it's often very hot and humid. Way too hot. (Source: I did 11 years of school there!) But just 30 minutes drive down the road is Forster-Tuncurry, between ocean and lake, with a sea breeze, never too hot or humid, which I'd say does have perfect weather. They're both fairly small country towns, though, not cities.

I'm in Sydney now. I have friends in many countries, who live with typhoons, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, violence...and not having any of that here makes me feel fortunate and it almost justifies the crazy high rent.

Redwood City: Climate Best by Government Test

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwood_City,_California#Sloga...

I’m surprised that Tenerife didn’t come up. It’s a Spanish island of the coast of Africa which gets great weather and a narrow temperature band all year round. Half of the island is quite green and lush because it gets a decent amount of rain, while the other half is more dry. I suspect Madeira is similar but even more green.

So much of it is subjective. But assuming you throw out having seasons--especially snowy seasons--and desire for year-round humid or dry heat--the answer probably comes down to some variation of a Mediterranean climate with assorted perturbations. Though that doesn't really match up with the results.

> Therefore, I decided that the best weather was the weather that would most encourage a person to go outdoors and stay outdoors. For that purpose, key weather elements would be sunshine, warmth, and dryness — calling to mind the Dreary Weather Index offered by Brian Brettschneider:

I think this is a bad measure of encouragement to go outdoors, as it gives (e.g.) large swaths of New Mexico and Arizona a good (i.e., low) score: there's no way I'm going outside when it's >40C.

Certainly not all of places in Arizona get so hot that airplanes can't fly of course:

* https://www.wired.com/story/phoenix-flights-canceled-heat/

So hopefully the min and max temperature was taken into account in this article's calculations, as it does not seem to be in the "Dreary Weather Index". I am reminded of the episode of the cartoon King of the Hill where they visit Phoenix:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PYt0SDnrBE

Wow, that dreariness index plot is a total mess. I'm not even colorblind, and I had way too much trouble distinguishing the best from worst...

Is there some reason they go orange to blue then back to red?

Someone messed up the color legend while plotting. It takes a bit of work to adjust it manually.

San Diego and some of Tijuana are just about unbeatable IMO. Any other weather that isn't perfectly sunny is only a short drive away if you so feel the need... the only thing I've ever missed from the MidWest is a few good thunderstorms a year, but even those don't seem to happen as much as it at least seemed to when I was much younger.

San Diego is fine if you can live near the water, but go inland where people can afford to live and it's basically desert.

This somewhat rings true, just like the microclimate that Santa Monica and such has vs the greater LA region.

I have ran into more than a few highly intelligent/quite successful people living near the water in SD who decided long ago that they were completely content with the fact they were going to be renting essentially for life. Perhaps once they get to be exceptionally old they'll have a change of heart, but for decades or longer and likely many more, they've simply found the climate to be worth throwing a sizeable amount of their income into a non-equity black hole paying off somebody more fortunates mortgages.

Personally, I'm a bit jealous of their ability to have that mindset and be perfectly happy people.

It's really important to keep in mind that climate can change dramatically in only short distances. From last week, at the same time it was 100F in Sacramento, CA, it was 60F in Inverness, CA. Same latitude, same elevation. The two are about 100 miles apart, a short distance when searching the globe.

I cite Inverness, CA because it has the best weather for my tastes: 20F annual temperature range with average high just under 70F. Always breezy out of the West, with clean ocean air coming off the Pacific. 257 days of sun, 42 inches of rain, less than 1% 'muggy' humidity.

Most places within 10 miles of the Northern California Pacific coast have these attributes.

https://weatherspark.com/y/609/Average-Weather-in-Inverness-...

Average high under 70 is cold for most people. That's too cold for most water related outdoor activity which is what summer is based around for many people.

Is it me, or have quite a large percentage of links bit rotted for an article a bit over a year old? I haven't clocked on a bunch, just 4-5, but the only one that actually worked was to Wikipedia.

I did something similar back in the late `80s when I decided to leave Los Angeles after living there for about 15 years, but weather was not the only criteria I looked into.

I also looked into cost of housing, wages, employment, acres of public land, annual rainfall, proximity to nuke plants, air and water quality, crime rates, taxes, schools.

It took me a long time to gather the data I wanted to review. Back then I bought an "US Alamanac" to help with my research and it was a great resource.

Where did you land?

This is incredibly dense, and I hope to read it. My first impression is that people like much warmer temperatures than I do (Orlando Florida!?).

I don't think I could define what "the best weather" means. I like a sunny day as much as anyone, but I like snow too, and a huge thunderstorm, and even a bit of rain, and mist, and everything else. I'd miss a lot of that if I lived somewhere that had the "best" weather.

Basically you want seasons instead of monotony.

This is touched on, and you can get a lot of those things by living in an area with different climes in close proximity, for example a coastal region that rises into mountains not too far away.

So the question is, if you want snow some times, do you want to live in the snow, or have access to the snow, and how close is close enough? The bay area has Tahoe, which you can reach in about 4 hours, for access to snow. If you want to actually live in the snow for at least part of the year, the SF Bay Area won't cut it then.

For me personally I like for it to snow but not hang around more than a day or two. Southeast is kind of ideal for this. Couple snow storms a year in the peak of winter and during those the low is normally around the 20s. It can snow on a Monday and be back hitting 70 by Thursday.

Though it can lead to ice and things like the Atlanta snowpacalypse.

I thought the same for 30 years. Then I moved to Southern California. I don't miss the any of those things. My allergies are gone. My exercise routine is consistent and my outdoor hobbies increased. Beach, mountains, flatland, desert, gardens, etc are all within 1 or 2 hours from me.

It's on one of the lists, but the weather here looks pretty good to me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antofagasta

Never too hot or cold, and it never rains. Of course nothing much grows there.

Little surprised Redwood, CA isn't there. Their slogan is "Climate best by government test"

Redwood City*

Redwood City and other mid Bay Area mid-peninsula cities have very nice weather. They have the same effect that makes San Diego so nice, the interface between warm sun and cool ocean. If the criteria was slightly different, biased cooler, Redwood city might be on the list.

I would wager on the Canary Islands never to hot or cold and lots of good weather

The answer to the title is simple.

"It depends on the person".

Each individual has so much going on today, that you could create a billion environments and people would still not be satisfied with the weather.

A billion answers, got it. Thank you for your informative and helpful contribution.

Hawaii. HNL is the only airport in the world I have seen - that has no air conditioning. It doesn't need one, 24x7x365.

big takeaway from this post - Brazil as a tech hub is next. Amazing weather, infrastructure in Sao Paulo, tech talent, cheap currency, and a huge domestic TAM. As we get into more manmade climate change, Sao Paulo will pull people south of MIA and even NYC given the time unity and the increase in living standards for every given USD.

So the only 5 cities that score 11 are:

San Paulo, Brazil

Mzuzu, Malawi

Durban, South Africa

East London, South Africa

San Diego, USA

The irony of naming the place with the World's best weather after London.

I am so glad to see San Diego on this list. I am generally not fussy about the weather but I love San Diego weather.

Best optimization of weather conditions has to be seasonal. Seattle and Portland may be horrible 8 months out of the year but the summer months are quite perfect.

What I want to know are which cities are great seasonal cities in which I could potentially buy a condo for the high seasons, and then leave in the non-high seasons for a potential rental at a still competitive price.

For example: SF sucks in the summer, but maybe the tourists don't know that.

> For example: SF sucks in the summer, but maybe the tourists don't know that.

Actual SF, or surrounding areas? I would think SF is fairly nice in the summer with the ocean breeze. Sonoma county gets pretty warm in the summer as well, but SF proper always felt cooler to me. I can imagine San Jose being just as bad or worse though.

You do have the probably apocryphal Mark Twain "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." And you can really get the cold, grey city vibe. But, honestly for the most part, it's hard to find a lot of fault (for me) in SF climate most of the year. And I've spent a lot of time there even if I've never lived there.

ADDED: And I wouldn't think most people would think anything in NoCal generally (or most of CA even more generally) "sucked" in the summer

> I wouldn't think most people would think anything in NoCal generally (or most of CA even more generally) "sucked" in the summer

Eh, week or longer periods of temperatures in the high 90's and low 100's when you're not at the coast isn't always pleasant, I could see how some people think it sucks, depending on how much you're required to be outside. It gets hotter the farther north and more inland you go for a while (even if you don't have to go inland much).

In the end a lot is just what you're used to, I think.

Central Valley (for me) is definitely less comfortable than western mountains, coastal mountains, and coast.

Summer in the PNW is no good - it's sunny every day for months straight! It's terrible!

I'll take those 8 months of drizzle, take the sun away thanks!

Right?! 80 degrees and sunburns? No thanks, I'll take my 52 and overcast thank you very much. You think I live here by accident?

I wonder what the internet provider is in Forks,WA...

SF has microclimates and for my preferences the southeastern part of the city (the Mission, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch) have perfect summers. Highs of 65-75, and then at night the fog comes and cools things down for perfect sleep temperatures. On the western side of the city it’s just fog all day.

Plus it’s always an impressive sight to see the fog come over the hills every day.

The excessive summer sun is actually a bug not a feature, especially if you factor in the diminished air quality with increased forest fires. Last summer everybody I know chaired when the rains finally came and cleared the air from all the particulates.

Actually IMO the PNW would have a pretty sweet overall weather if only it would rain just a little more in the summer (say once a week / every two weeks).

Here are some more good questions:

What is the World’s Best Weather?

When is the World’s Best Weather?

Why is the World’s Best Weather?

Cancun!

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