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Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

And this is why SF is so popular. It is a shame Florida never developed a huge tech hub, but Miami has plenty of other stuff going for it. (besides hurricanes)

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".

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I moved to SF recently from Tennessee. It's been wonderful to have such pleasant weather year-round. Granted, it's not a tropical paradise, but you will survive with an optional light jacket in your backpack nearly all year.

The only other place that is now tempting me is San Diego.

San Diego weather might be the best in the world. It feels like its physically impossible for it to be above 85 degrees from the prevailing ocean winds.

Yes, best weather in the country.

I live in Berkeley now and would love to sell my house and move some place cheaper, but the weather here is just incredible. The only thing I would like is warmer nights but I can’t seem to find that without 90 degree days.

Live in SF and also wish we had warmer nights, but I figure in about 10 years with global warming it'll be about right...

Coastal Southern California

Any specifics areas ?

Redwood City: Climate Best by Government Test

I lived in Redwood City for a few years. It was fantastic. We moved there from Tennessee, and after the first week we were like “wow, it has been clear blue skies every day this week!” After another four months with barely a cloud in the sky, it dawned on us that the climate really was quite incredible (although there are two seasons, “green” and “brown”, and the months are swapped from what they are in the southeast).

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.

What I find is that a total lack of clouds can make the sunlight feel overly bright and intense. The dryness can also lead to a bit of dust in the air.

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

> 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 is windy and overcast. Almost all of California except the mountain peaks and deserts has better climate.

I'm in Seattle, we are the US definition of overcast. 62% of our days have heavy could cover.

SF doesn't even make the top 10 list of America's cloudiest cities. :)

But the clouds up there are gorgeous! Here we just get a grey blanket.

It's very neighborhood dependent, if you want to live somewhere sunny you definitely can.

Yeah, this. The folks above almost certainly live in the lee of Twin Peaks. Out here in the Western part of the city we have Winter and what I like to call the "Season of Cold Winds".

So true. Driving up to SF from San Mateo often caused us to question the sanity of people paying so much to live in such a terrible micro-climate. We'd often be leaving clear and sunny, t-shirt and shorts weather, to enter what looked like an apocalyptic storm-chasers situation of cold, wet, doom and gloom.

Makes for great sailing year-round on the bay though!

Oakland is also great, arguably better.

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