Goldilocks Zone Finder – Find your ideal climate
lukechampine.com
lukechampine.com
It's still mostly a toy at this point, but I'd like to add more knobs and data so that I can narrow down the best place to live (and hopefully help other people do the same). If you want to contribute, the code is open source: https://github.com/lukechampine/goldilocks
The site weighs about 1.6 MB (gzipped -- the full climate data is ~35 MB uncompressed!) and is hosted on a Linode, which seems to be holding up pretty well.
Also, a big thank you to those in the comments who shared links to similar projects! The "pleasant places" map is super close to what I want. Ideally this project would look something like that, but with the ability to select your own preferences for what constitutes a "perfect" day.
I thought about making something like this too, years ago. I wanted to converge data from tornados, fault lines, flooding, and hurricaine probabilities. But then I got sucked into EVERY parameter I might want to consider, like air traffic (vortac lines), distance to power grid, UPS coverage, internet coverage, cellular coverage... and eventually the amount of data crushed my brain and the project never even made it to a NextJS boilerplate. :) So if you want to add more data... hint hint hint. :)
How did you "bend" those hexagons? What's going on there as I go from coast to coast? Is that to map them to a sphere?
The MVP site took >1 second to rerender when you dragged the slider. I got it down to a few dozen ms, which makes it a lot more fun to use. Pretty proud of that :)
Thank you for not making it a typical CRUD app that queries an overloaded 35MB database for a couple round trips every time you want to move a slider....
But the risk from earthquakes is much harder to quantify since they are so rare, hard to predict except in broad generalities, and the damage suffered is also hard to predict. You can try to reduce your risk by following good earthquake practices, but it's hard to quantify the risk reduction.
In my area, the earthquake risk is: “We estimate the probability of having a magnitude 9 earthquake in the next 50 years is about 10 to 14 percent”, but no one can say exactly where the earthquake will strike or what areas will suffer the most damage.
I can imagine a day where we can do this in our heads and we become a loose super organism.
But I digress, massively!
I went through scraping weather averages and graphing them in elk, then finding https://weatherspark.com/map and now this. Best option yet.
One knob I'd love to have is the ability to tune the # of days ranges - "above 200" is a pretty large bucket depending on how you tune the other numbers. It looks this is changeable in the code, but maybe it's tied tightly to the available data?
That said - you have to be wary of both types of maps because it doesn't take into account other potentially annoying factors. The biggest being humidity - there's a huge difference between 90 degree phoenix and 90 degree miami. Then there's rainfall, and one a lot of people don't think about - wind.
To add - if you're thinking about seriously comparing two climates, check out this comparison tool [2]. Has any metric you can dream of charted together.
These days I am used to it and wear short sleeves down to about 0 to -10F and watch the minds of everyone go WTF is he on. Had I don't know how many people try to donate me jackets while out walking. (Western AR now but it is the same as east Texas for climate.)
btw, thanks for reminding me of the pleasant places map -- I think it must have been an unconscious influence on this.
Given an air temperature (T) in °F and a relative humidity (rh).
Indexheat = − 42.379 + (2.04901523 × T) + (10.14333127 × rh) − (0.22475541 × T × rh) − (6.83783×10−3×T^2) − (5.481717 × 10−2 × rh^2) + (1.22874 × 10−3 × T^2 × rh) + (8.5282×10−4 × T × rh^2) − (1.99×10−6 × T^2 × rh^2)
The equation came later - the output of that article is just a table, and the equation was derived to be a nice fit over the table's values.
But yeah, as others mentioned, rainfall, storms, cloudiness, etc, are all things that would be great to include.
Not to 'steal' ideas from the other site, but having that little year avg chart pop up on click is a really killer feature for showing which months are best. For example, I'd much rather live somewhere with 4 solid "uncomfortable" months and 8 solid comfortable, than somewhere with 2 on, 1 off.
AT = Ta + 0.33×e − 0.70×ws − 4.00
where:
Ta = Dry bulb temperature (°C)
e = Water vapour pressure (hPa) [humidity]
ws = Wind speed (m/s) at an elevation of 10 meters
The vapour pressure can be calculated from the temperature and relative humidity using the equation:
e = rh / 100 × 6.105 × exp ( 17.27 × Ta / ( 237.7 + Ta ) )
where:
rh = Relative Humidity [%]
I don't need the weather to be ideal - as long as it's not rainy, the high is below 40, and it's a wet bulb with no wind - that works for me.
If you're used to that, it's easy to remember that C = (F-32) * 9 / 5.
Using a random human’s body temperature and a strange random mixture of chemicals as scale points does not make any sense. Might as well pick a random hot day and a random cold day and use that.
https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-ha...
Climate-resistant design and construction is going to be a booming field in years to come. Termite-type underground construction, fire-resistant bunkers in dry zones, maybe flood-resistant floatable housing in flood zones, solar-powered AC units, etc. A lot of climates are more tolerable if you have a refuge to escape to.
Notably, it shows that the idyllic Mediterranean/Californian climate can also be found in parts of Western Australia, South Africa, and Chile.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classifica...
I've been to none of these cities so I've no idea what they're like to visit or live in, but when I'm walking my dog in the morning and it's -1C on the 12th of March my mind wanders :-)
I’m currently PNW lifestyle, but planning a lengthy expedition around South America starting later this year; email in bio for anyone still reading this thread and wanting to keep in touch.
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.6396959 linked via the paper referenced on the wikipedia page.
Sorry for the overly critical tone of my comment, BTW. Sometimes the internet makes it hard for me to remember that real people work on stuff and are reading what you're saying about it.
People don't get it, SF will be always popular because the climate is just that good. Seattle is a close #2 IMHO, but you have to be able to put up with 8 months of grey, which is a huge "but".
30 miles north in San Francisco it’s quite a bit cooler and less sunny though. I would drive into the fog every Saturday morning to visit the farmers market.
We’re back in Tennessee now and I forgot how bad my seasonal affective disorder gets. Apparently I crave sunshine.
This is pretty minor nitpicking overall, but the middle of the day can feel a little harsh for these reasons. The landscapes also get dried out.
This is more noticeable in the south bay than SF and thereabouts
That's probably why Redwood City wins. In the summer, if you take 101 from the Presido to Gilroy, there's a spectrum from cool, damp, and foggy to hot and dry. The happy median is between Millbrae and Santa Clara, but you have a dial you can use to pick anything in that range.
SF doesn't even make the top 10 list of America's cloudiest cities. :)
Makes for great sailing year-round on the bay though!
The only other place that is now tempting me is San Diego.
It's probably way too much customization, but if I want somewhere that has at least 30 days that don't get over 30 degrees, as well as maybe 15 days above 90 degrees, I'd kind of have to have it open in two windows and compare locations myself, as opposed to being able to set which end of the color spectrum would be my "green" for each filter, layer them on top of each other, and just look for the greenest places.
But it seems like most people have a preference for consistent weather, so you're probably nailing your target market's wishes!
I already know I love where I live, too, so it'd be fun to look at where else might suit me, but I'm not making plans to move based on a hope of weather improvement.
Like when I go outside and it's freezing, am I like "yay"? No. But there is a coziness to the winter I appreciate, getting to go inside and warm up. And then warmer weather starts to come, and you feel relieved by it, you get to actually be like "yay, Spring is here!", instead of just getting acclimated to it being spring all the time. You get to cycle through different fashion styles too (which until a few years ago I wouldn't have really thought about, but have started to care about more recently). I think happiness is more about deltas than steady state, and so I think it is actually nicer to get to experience the variety.
But even ignoring all of that, the fact that weather is so important to someone that they consider moving over it just feels so alien to me.
I live in New York, the delta is fairly significant, though I’m sure there’s worse places. I have heard of places in like e.g. remote Canada where it seems like life kinda just shuts down in the winter, I could definitely see that sucking.
And when I moved to a place with more even seasons (and more sunlight overall), I no longer experience this seasonal depression, so yeah, I'd definitely put "good weather" close to the top on the list on how to improve my life, and subsequently, it's a strong indicator on where I can live in the world.
It's still pretty neat though. :)
[0] https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/crn/ [1] https://www.atdd.noaa.gov/u-s-crn-groups-map/
What an odd question!
Edit: My ideal temperature range left me with just Vancouver, Canada.
It probably isn't that hard for you to just convert in your head.
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w3u=1&w13=mhgt&w13...
NOAA doesn't seem to publish any data on actual mixing height, and even these forecasted mixing heights are only available for some areas (I can't find them for anyplace in Northern California, for example).
I am extremely sensitive to air pollution and this is, by far, the number one factor that correlates with my well-being. You'd think that coastal areas mean "clean ocean air", but they also tend to have very low mixing heights (Los Angeles is an extreme example) so when the wind isn't blowing in from the ocean it's pretty bad. Desert areas have spectacularly high mixing heights during the day, but near zero at night.
[*] Technically I'm trying to optimize for the highest height of the lowest Nth percentile (for something like N=5%).
One thing I've started to pay a lot more attention to is rainfall. The temperature in Southern California (where I currently live) is certainly pleasant, but that comes with the tradeoff of very limited rainfall, which seems to be having an increasingly negative impact as the years wear on.
Src: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...
I wish this website supported Europe and Asia.
The temperature range is one of the many factors. Even in a hotter area (from statistics), you can create a pleasant environment around the year if you have enough space and strategically plant trees and other greens, without any artificial air conditioning.
Soil: Look for soil quality and their changes over time and thus the likelihood of future quality.
Water: This is one of the most important ones. I believe you want to live/retire in the outskirts, grow your food, etc. Water plays a crucial role in what you want to do and what life you will have.
Calamities: History of natural calamities.
The others will be crime rates, political unrests, and accessibility, depending on how far you want to stay away from the crowd.
Nonetheless, your app is super cool and has given me ideas. Start with all the software possible and commission a small research team to pinpoint a few locations and zero in your final choices. ;-)
It's also just damn interesting as an interactive climate map!
The reason is that 35 °C (95 °F) is fatal to humans within hours at 100% relative humidity, but relatively comfortable at 10% humidity for people who are drinking enough water and have sun protection.
Then my friend told me about the Kenyan Highlands, which he thinks has the best climate. It's basically 23C year round!
Don't know what kind of data sources there are for this but voracious insects can make an otherwise lovely climate unbearable.
so there are even less places that i feel compatible with, if measuring climate AND people ..
anyway, YMMMV.
If you could somehow incorporate sunshine (examples: # sunny days, daily hours of sun, % cloud cover, or something similar), that would be a phenomenal addition.
And the climate was... Perfect.
[0] https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-cli...
(Great link btw, thanks for sharing!)
btw, you can also view individual months if you only care about a particular season.
I think it would be interesting to see the same map of the US but showing areas that never reach above or below the limits that you set.
This told me that I should live in Alaska, or on Mt. Washington. Unfortunately my ancestors came from your cloudy islands and we never adapted to all this horrible sunlight I guess.
A couple feature requests that would improve this
- have an option to show the reverse of Min/Max days. i.e. Show me places where the temperature is below an extreme for a minimum number of days.
- better accessibility, this color scheme doesn’t work for the color blind
- what about wet vs dry days? i.e. Precipitation
Small bit: on an iPhone XS Max, the slider couldn’t be set to 20°F or 85°F. Making the control box slightly wider would probably allow that, but it took nothing away from the practical usability, of course.
Also apparently the ideal place for me to live in America would be in a national park/forest. Time to change careers I guess.
(I'm kidding, this is really neat.)
At a minimum, cycling through the 2 standards should be idempotent (or at least I think that's what it's called...)
Please add a Celsius switch! Thanks from the rest of the World.
I was wishing there was something like this, that also took population demographics like age, gender balance, education level into consideration.
Climate plays a huge role in quality of life but it rarely comes up when people are comparing the next "tech hub" to move to.
Azores seemed similar, but most maps forget humidity which makes it tad too warm.
[0] nomadlist.com
As long as it's in the US.