jacob wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 10:36 am
Many have expressed a desire for certain temperatures. It would be helpful to know these preferences with a bit more precision than "warm" or "not too cold". We all know that what is tshirt weather to someone from Minnesota is snowsuit weather to a Californian.
Keep in mind that specific demands really narrows down the list of options. To keep it simple, I've divided the continental US into the following zones.
If you already know areas you like, you can take a look at this map to see where they're also found.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _US_50.png
I'll split it into 3 regional columns with north-south divisions:
1) West of the continental divide, we have mostly mediterranean climates ranging from hot dry summers (100F) to warm dry summers (80F). Snow is rare or light. In the summer, these places are often on literal fire. Water is often imported from elsewhere. Most of these places do not need heat and most are also fine w/o A/C.
2) East of the continental divide (Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico) we have mostly semi-arid conditions ranging from very cold in the north to rather warm in the south. Rain is rare being in the rain shadow of the mountains to the west.
East of that, we'll split the right-most column into 3 rows with east-west divisions.
3) In the northern-most row of North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, NY, and New England, you'll need a snow shovel and your refrigiwear all winter long. Summers are pleasant, but during winter time, you'll get easily buried under several feet of snow in some places.
4) The middle row of South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania get a mixture of both, that is, you'll experience the full range of seasons (and a full range of changing clothes). Summers are hot and humid, and winters are often freezing with a foot of snow. Lots of farming here. You can grow plants. But you also get the most unpleasant temperatures at either end having to constantly adjust as the seasons change.
5) The south east (everything below, basically Kansas in the NW corner and Florida in the SW corner) experiences humid conditions that range from warm in the north to hot in the south. Snow is light or rare. This was not a popular place to live before the invention of A/C. Bad weather includes hurricanes and tornadoes.
In terms of personal preferences I'd rank these in the order of 1, 3, 2, 4, 5. I don't think any of them are absolute deal-breakers for me (I already live in 4, but I do miss 1) although I do find "hot and humid" to be unpleasant to my constitution. Then again, I'm mostly an indoor-type person, so I can live with that.
It would be helpful to know people's rankings in terms of that list. In particular, whether the warm-loving people are still okay with warm if it also means humid?