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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

I like data like this - it reminds me of the pleasant places maps[1].

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.

1 - https://kellegous.com/j/2014/02/03/pleasant-places/

2 - https://outflux.net/weather/noaa/index.php

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Hmm, I can probably incorporate humidity data without too much trouble. Is there a standard way to calculate a "feels like" temperature using humidity?

btw, thanks for reminding me of the pleasant places map -- I think it must have been an unconscious influence on this.

The calculation from the NWS: https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_heatindex (see the linked PDF[1])

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)

[1] https://www.weather.gov/media/epz/wxcalc/heatIndex.pdf

It would be nice if that document cited sources or provided a methodology for how these values were derived.

Ultimately derived from here: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/18/7/1520-04...

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.

I came to comment for this very reason. I care a lot about humidity. Ideally you could include both humidity (dew point is the best measure of humidity, btw) and feels like, but just the humidity would be enough.

But yeah, as others mentioned, rainfall, storms, cloudiness, etc, are all things that would be great to include.

Hey thanks, nice work btw. As others pointed out, heat index is a decent indicator I think.

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.

Yep. Personally I'm interested in finding two locations: one with great weather throughout the summer, and one with great weather throughout the winter.

If I had the money... Spokane throughout the summer, central Florida during the winter.

Don't know about Spokane, but summer would probably be somewhere on the West Coast, northern New England, or higher altitudes in the Southwest (e.g. Santa Fe). Winter is harder but, assuming I was trying to avoid snow, probably somewhere broadly in the desert Southwest.

Sounds like you could minimize travel then by say, Flagstaff and Phoenix, respectively?

Personally, I'm generally fine with snow and cold but but, yeah, if you're looking for fairly temperate climate year-round, it's mostly either California coastal areas or shifting between the lowlands/highlands in the Southwest. As you say, Flagstaff and somewhere in the Phoenix region would be a good example. Probably are examples in Colorado and New Mexico as well. Vegas in winter is also an option many like.

You could use the dew point to combine humidity and temperature?

If taking comments from the peanut gallery...any chance on also limiting to "waking hours"? I mostly do not care what the temperature is at 3am, but it likely dramatically pushes down the low temperatures for a day.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology calculates apparent temperature like this

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 [%]

http://www.bom.gov.au/info/thermal_stress/#atapproximation

That would be awesome, because right now it lists my city as ideal and I thought it sucked lol! Yes the temperature is not extreme but when the humidity is 600% it feels like a sauna

Yeah this paints most of the Southwest as having a worse climate than where I live, which... yeah, for anyone who hates humidity (which is most people, I think?), that's not remotely true. I'd take 95F and bone dry over 82F and soaking-wet air, any day. Happily.

Same. I'm moving from FL to the SW this year. People see our summer weather - 88hi, 78 low almost every day and think it's perfect. It's not, and it feels gross down to about 72 degrees because of the suffocating humidity.

I thought we had humid air in Montreal, literally living on an island, and to some extent it's true, but when I went down to Florida did I understand what humidity can make you feel like. Was there mid-August, some days were brutal.

Same with cold I would take dry non windy -10F over humid windy 30F any day.

Moved from Colorado (down to -40 in the winter) to east Texas as a kid. Went outside and was told it was mid 30F's. Did not believe they because it felt way colder.

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.)

https://weatherspark.com/ has great data, too. Excellent graphs for temperature, humidity, clear skies, etc.