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Comment by Dewie | Hacker News Reader

> "I will not go to Canada," said the 25-year-old from Argentina of his initial reaction. "Twenty degrees below zero, are you crazy?"

Perhaps the warmest major Canadian city, with a mild winter due to being coastal ('twenty degree below zero' - probably not).

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Certainly Vancouver's winters are milder than anywhere east of the Rockies, but the flipside is that you have to put up with rain, rain and more rain. After living in Vancouver for five years I moved to southern California where the weather was fantastic. I'm now in Melbourne, Australia, which is considered by Aussies to have cold winters but as a Canadian I just laugh whenever I hear that.

Apart from the weather I'd say that a more legitimate reason not to move to Vancouver is the insane cost of housing, the most expensive in North America. For this reason alone I would never consider moving my family back to Vancouver.

I've had both Scots and Canadians complain about how cold Melbourne gets. The problem isn't so much that the temperature drop doesn't get below freezing very often, it's that we don't build for the cold. Another friend says that he knows a German who, when she visits someone's house, shakes an inner wall with her fingertips and says "you guys can't build houses for shit". The ironic thing is that we have some of the most expensive housing in the world, in terms of cost vs average annual income.

This all being said, the current winter we're in has been particularly weak - lots of warm, sunny days. It's not the usual dreary, rainy Melbourne winter.

This. I'll take NYC winters over Melbourne any day. And yes, so many Aussie tradies are flat-out incompetent, don't give a shit and are quite often thieves (have a lot of stories about contractors coming back to the site after completion to steal water heaters and such).

I'm from Australia. Can definitely say housing is cheaper than Vancouver. Vancouver has been flooded by Super Rich Asians from China dumping their money in property and sky rocketing the prices for property. Can't get a 2 bedroom for less than $750,000.

> Can't get a 2 bedroom for less than $750,000.

Sure you can, maybe not in the tiny downtown peninsula. Mid-rise along Mid-Main or Fraser, or some of the towers around Joyce goes for $500k. (Still a lot, but not that lot. I've moved to London and it's a lot more expensive than Vancouver.)

Hey, it only rains from November to April.

Also, rent isn't so crazy here, you just can't buy anything for a reasonable amount.

+1 on the housing, it's a major factor. We came over in 2001, so basically got lucky, but today it's a real issue. More and more people are being pushed out to the suburbs in the Valley, and then having a pretty bad commute into downtown. Mountains and sunshine are nice, but that's a real impact on quality of life for a lot of people.

I imagine him then moving to California and rarely going outside.

Vancouver weather is pretty close to London England, except sandwiched between an ocean and majestic mountain range.

Yep, I've lived 10 years London and now 10 years Vancouver and it's comparable. It's probably even nicer in Vancouver, as we have a ground pool and air conditioning here, while in London those were more of a rarity. Vancouver does get a very grey and miserable November, but the Spring/Summers are usually very good. It's a cliche, but I've often done the 'ski in the morning up the mountain, swim in the sea in the afternoon' May/June. That's got to be good, right?

I miss looking north and seeing the mountains in Vancouver.

I think the cliche is "ski in the morning, go surfing in the afternoon, and play golf in the evening". ;-)

It sure sounds good. Is it actually good?

Sure, we love it and we're lucky to have lots of choice on where to live in the world (UK/US/Canada docs now). Just vacation somewhere with less rain or more sunlight in November if it gets to you.

Flights aren't that cheap here, but we usually just drive down to Seattle (2h) and fly to Vegas/Maui/SoCal for a good deal from there.

Vancouver seems to get a lot more rain than London (about twice as much) and nearly as much as Glasgow.

anecdotally I would say Vancouver gets more sunshine as well.

If you can imagine Seattle's weather, that's basically Vancouver.

It's funny you bring up Seattle.

Temperature is only one factor. Another big one is humidity. Seattle is the 7th most humid city in the US, which can make 45 degrees feel like 30 and 80 degrees feel like 95. This is why Seattle weather is miserable year around except for a fe weeks in late spring and early summer.

Not to mention the constant rain, of course. Drizzle, they call it.

It actually is a constant drizzle, though only in the winter. Rarely do we get proper rain. It's one of the few things I miss from Atlanta's weather. Frankly, Seattle's climate really is very nice compared to much of the United States (say, the entire East Coast and the Midwest). It is not as nice as chunks of the California coast, but I'll take my lower cost of living over the Bay and my 15 minute commute over the terrifying sprawl that is LA. I can't really make an argument against San Diego, though. Every time I've been there it's been beautiful.

I've been living in Seattle for 1.5 years and I have a hard time with this "we rarely get proper rain" everyone says. I've seen proper rain countless times. Sometimes it really pours. I thought I'd be able to walk around in the drizzle and not get very wet, but my experience is that it's not really drizzle and I get soaked after a number of minutes outside.

In Atlanta many afternoons in the summer include a 3pm thunderstorm. Downed trees, washed out roads (I'm looking at you, Ponce de Leon where you branch off to Decatur), and plenty of thunder and lightning. You'll be positively drenched if you're outside in it at all. Seattle rarely if ever sees rain like that.

A drizzle does mean there is actively water coming out of the sky. You will get wet, but a single layer rain jacket with a hood is sufficient to mitigate that. I suppose YMMV.

This is highly subjective. Looking at the list[1] you really need feet on the ground to evaluate it correctly. Seattle/SF might be technically more humid than other cities, but they get coastal breeze and constant air movement. Anything with dense treelines (SE US) or in a valley might have lower humidity but stagnant air means sweat never evaporates and even businessmen run around w/ pit stains. It's prob just lack of residential AC that makes it seem hot at times, but it's definitely got nothing on a VA/GA/MD summer.

The drizzle combined w/ high latitude create very dark winters though.

[1] http://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/US/most-humid...

(hm can't edit) Anyway, I thought about it more and realized the rain (100% humidity I suppose) probably skews that figure. When it's sunny, it's actually quite dry here as evidenced by my hair staying put, where on the east coast, I'd normally look like a chia pet.

That is because Seattle's humidity quickly turns into dew:

http://www.komonews.com/weather/faq/4308492.html

Wow, so uninformed...

Having lived in Mississippi and Seattle for 4+ years each (Seattle it was more like 8), windchill is much worse in Mississippi than it is in Seattle. In Seattle, you can pretty much leave your window open year round and have a nice sleep. 70 is considered hot in the summer; 40 is considered cold in the winter.

Now Mississippi: hot humid summers, cold humid winters. Life pretty much sucks outside of Fall/Spring.

Edit: in the interest of keeping people away from Seattle, I take everything back and agree with parent.

>>Wow, so uninformed...

I lived in Seattle for six years. So I'm not quite "uninformed" as you seem to believe.

>>Now Mississippi: hot humid summers, cold humid winters. Life pretty much sucks outside of Fall/Spring.

At least you have Fall/Spring in Mississippi. In Seattle, it's overcast nine months of the year, so you don't really have seasons.

I'm really not sure if you trying to scare people off or are really serious. Po's law is confusing me now.

Spring and fall are really nice in Seattle, Summer is to. It is just the start of November until around March where the rain rolls in...why don't you just look at the statistics, the numbers don't lie:

http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/U...

and more about humidity:

http://www.komonews.com/weather/faq/4308492.html

Anyways, the more people who don't want to live in Seattle, the better, so I'd rather not convince anyone.

Of course I'm serious. The weather in Seattle is so bad that Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) is a very common phenomenon. That's right: people get depressed because of the dark, wet and dreary weather there. I think that fact alone speaks for itself.

As icing on the cake, your "the more people who don't want to live in Seattle, the better" attitude is yet another reason not to live there. Basically a form of "just leave me alone!" syndrome. They call it Seattle Freeze. You can look it up if you haven't heard of it before (although that's unlikely).

You are exaggerating, if you just look at the charts, rain falls off from January and is quite reasonable by late March/April. It doesn't really pick up until November. So you are talking about around 3.5 months, and anyone from Fairbanks would tell you "that is nothing."

There is a big problem with sun drenched Californians coming in with bay area equity, driving up real estate in Seattle, and road raging around with their "got to get somewhere quickly" attitudes. Locals don't appreciate it, and it has been that way since the 90s at least.

Its not "just leave me alone" but its more like "losing you is no big loss to us." I've lived in the Bay Area and found it quite inferior: bad traffic, bad air, lack of weather diversity (kind of sunny all the time, at least south of the city). But whatever, we all have our preferences.

Vancouver is about 2C cooler than Seattle, and gets about 10% less sunlight and 15% more rain. But yes, they're certainly quite similar.

I didn't think this was possible. Interesting.

It's similar to the UK; very temperate.

Victoria's even warmer, and gets far less rain. Plus the opportunities for living an outdoor, active lifestyle are even greater.

I think the person was talking about Canada in general. Many of the tech sector locations in the east coast (Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo) do tend to go to -20 or -30 quite frequently in the winters!

Toronto rarely even gets to -20c in winter, the average low is -6c in the coldest month (January). Ottawa/Montreal is slightly colder and much snowier though.

When i lived in Toronto -20c was relatively common in the winter. It might only be a 3-5 days each winter, but it happened pretty regularly. -30C was really rare.

Apparently Toronto has 22 days per year where the temperature drops to less than -10c.

http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/Ontario/Places/...

Toronto does get to -20c in the winter it just isn't that common unless you include the windchill factor then it isn't that unusual to be in the -15 to -25 range (and very occasionally into the -30 to -35 range).

Toronto absolutely gets that cold in the winter and in the dead of winter it often gets colder than that (Jan, Feb). The spring and summer are quite sunny and pleasant though. Source: Torontonian.

The article specifically said that the company was redirecting him to Vancouver, not just Canada. For that matter, one can look at pretty much any coastal location below the Arctic Circle and say with a pretty good confidence - "I probably won't experience 20 degrees below zero there" (well, one exception comes to my mind: Vladivostok).

I wouldn't be packing my swim trunks and sunglasses if I were being redirected to Southern Patagonia, on the basis of hearing that Buenos Aires has nice beaches.

They didn't tell us that Vancouver was "the warmest major Canadian city" when they were telling us that we were being relocated here. All we knew was http://i.imgur.com/X2l9uxU.jpg

Reminds me of Albany NY in the Dilbert TV show

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GEIXVszdb4Y/UUqKPJes1qI/AAAAAAAAP...

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