Cincy Weather (Cincinnati, Washington: apartment, tornado, live)

[fiskkm]

Thanks for the input everyone. After living in Cleveland for most of my life, I have come to HATE the winters there. I am glad to know the winters should be significantly better in Cincy. Also, I have lived in Washington DC for the past couple years and equally dislike the summers there as the humidity is brutal. People have commented the summers will be more mild in Cincy, so that is good as well. Based on what I am hearing, the weather in Cincinnati sounds like a great fit.

[buckeyenative01]

I left Cincinnati for the drier climes of the Southwest. I'm deathly allergic to the molds and pollens found in the Cincinnati area, and it doesn't really help that the city lies between two major climate zones (humid subtropical and humid continental), so while some see it as an advantage that its not as cold as Columbus or Cleveland (although it has its fair share of winter storms made worse by the number of hills in the area), the lack of persistent cold also makes it impossible for molds/pollens to go away (hibernate?) for any length of time.

That said, I'd move back to Greater Cincinnati in a heartbeat if I wasn't concerned about having to consume oral steroids by the truckload and going to the ER every time the weather changed just to survive. Not everyone's in the same boat, but I've heard (anecdotally, so take from it what you will) of some people's asthma/allergies getting worse once they move to the area thanks in part to the weather.

[kjbrill]

Love Cincinnati weather or hate it. I do not have any significant allergies so I don't pay much attention to them. The summer is strictly hot and humid, so I basically stay indoors. The winter can be damp and gloomy, but I can deal with it. Getting out and shoveling the few snows we have off the driveway is actually quite invgorating. Why I shovel I am not sure. Between the freezer and the frig., we have enough food to sustain us for at least a month, maybe two.

[Tubby513]

Originally Posted by insightofitall

Except that Fall and Spring aren't nearly long enough. More often than not, we slide from Winter straight into Summer, and from Summer into Winter, with very few weeks in between in which the weather is actually consistently nice and cool in the 50s, 60s, and low 70s...which is what Spring and Fall are supposed to be. Those cooler days simply don't last long enough before we're back into the other extreme. In Spring, we have maybe a week of temps in the 60s, then a couple of weeks in the 70s, and then *BAM* it jumps straight up into the mid-80s or warmer and stays there. Same thing in reverse when it comes to Fall sliding into Winter.

Yeah, you're right. This past Spring was definitely like that...just gotta soak it up while it does last! I'm digging the current 7 day outlook...high 90s and 70s for lows today and tomorrow, then 70s for highs and 50s for lows next week. Gotta love it.

[Matthew Hall]

Cincinnatians are bad at handling snow because they don't get that much. Surely, the commentors here understand that. You get good at something when you do it a lot.

[kjbrill]

Originally Posted by Matthew Hall

Cincinnatians are bad at handling snow because they don't get that much. Surely, the commentors here understand that. You get good at something when you do it a lot.

No matter how much experience you have, when you get on a steep hill with wet snow you are going to slide. And if the temperature is right when the snow is compacted and turns to ice you will slide more. Years ago, 50+, I slide down Whetsel Ave. hill in Madisonville one morning on a bed of ice. Absolutely scared me to death. At the bottom of the hill went up a driveway and within a couple of feet of going through a garage door. How I went straight down the hill instead of veering sideways into a ditch, trees, etc. I will never know.

Many complain about Cincinnati drivers not knowing how to drive in snow. My view is Cincinnati drivers who have been here awhile know very well how unpredictable our hills are. Driving on hard packed snow on flat land is one thing, driving on wet, compressed into a slick icy surface on steep hills is something altogether different.

In the 30+ years I have lived in Mason, 10 years or so I worked in Norwood. During the time I worked in Norwood and commuted to Mason, I will admit to being paranoid about traveling I-71. During the occasionaly snowy bad weather day going home I could not believe the number of drivers treating the situation like it was the middle of July. Over time, I would observe drivers driving like it was mid-summer. A few miles up the road I would see the emergency crews as they responded to collisions with pillars, abutments, guard rails, or headons across the medians. It had a paranoid effect on me such that I would phone the wife and say I am going to stop at my parent's house in Madeira.

I have known many people who profess to be experts in how to drive in snow, but frankly only a few I will trust my well-being to.

[jjakucyk]

I agree with most of the observations so far, here's the highlights:

• Winter is gloomy and fairly wet, whether with snow or rain or whatever. Snow and ice doesn't last so long, but that just means it's mostly brown and gray, with few bright sunny days. It doesn't usually get oppressively cold like you see much more frequently in places like Cleveland or Chicago. Even Dayton tends to be a good 10º colder and windier all winter.

• While Cincinnati and ODOT are great about pre-treating roads with salt and calcium chloride before winter storms, they SUCK at plowing. Those pre-treatments only work on an inch or two of snowfall, but anything beyond that requires diligent plowing. Unfortunately, it seems like the snow removal crews go home once the snow stops falling, even if there's still a foot of snow on the streets. It's kind of bizarre.

• Summer is hot and humid, and the nights don't cool down much. It can be quite oppressive, but this isn't Atlanta either. Summer is usually quite dry, with few cloudy days and little rain, which makes the heat that much more difficult to bear. The humidity really hits you in the early morning, when you think it should at least be half decent outside.

• Spring and fall are outstanding times, but they're way too short. There only seems to be about 3 weeks of "open window" weather each season. In the fall, for example, the crash to winter usually seems to happen just after Halloween.

• Precipitation can be quite varied through the year. Winter is wet, but spring is when most of the rains really hit (especially this last spring, the wettest ever!). That makes things green up very nicely in April and May, but it can be difficult to plan outdoor activities. Sometime in June, the rain just completely stops, and you could go through all of July, August, September, and even October with hardly a raindrop or even a cloudy day. With September and October being the driest months of the year though, it can make for some phenomenally beautiful fall days.

• Pollen and allergies are horrible here. People who never had allergies move here and can find themselves in a terrible fix every spring. If you can take Washington DC though, you'd probably be ok here.

[kjbrill]

jjakucyk... I feel your observations are dead on. Spring and Fall could last longer. I basically switch my system from cool to heat and leave the temperature setting the same.

The only thing I disagree with is that winter is wet. The gloomy gray weather may give the impression of wet, but actually it is quite dry. This is the reason I run a humidifier in the winter, to offset the lack of moisture in the house due to the humidity migrating to the low pressure outdoors. To say Cincinnati winters are wet is quite a oxymoron. While dismal, overcast and grey, with a distinct lack of sunshine, they are actually dry rather than wet.

[jlawrence01]

Originally Posted by kjbrill

The only thing I disagree with is that winter is wet. The gloomy gray weather may give the impression of wet, but actually it is quite dry. This is the reason I run a humidifier in the winter, to offset the lack of moisture in the house due to the humidity migrating to the low pressure outdoors.

The average humidity in Cincinnati during the winter is over 70%. Most of the dryness inside the house is caused by gas furnaces which can easily lower the humidity to 20-30%.

[jjakucyk]

If the outdoor humidity is 100% at 35º that same air when warmed up to 70º inside will only have a humidity of about 27%. That's why we need to run humidifiers in the winter, because the infiltration of that cold air from outside, regardless of how moist it is at outdoor temperatures, becomes very dry when warmed to room temperature. Furnaces don't cause air to dry out by themselves, they just exacerbate the draftiness of the building by creating pressure differentials, especially when doors are closed. By that same token, the air coming out of your air conditioner in the summer is about 50º at close to 100% relative humidity. However, once it's mixed in with the room air at about 75º the humidity goes down below 40%. That's why it's called relative humidity after all. The absolute amount of moisture in the air stays the same, but when heated or cooled the amount of water that air can hold changes.

Winter is usually rather wet, if not actually raining or snowing, but also when there's snow or ice just sitting on the ground. I try to ride my bicycle all through the winter, and aside from some time in January when it tends to just get too cold, what usually stops me is snow, ice, or rain, whether falling from the sky or sitting on the ground. It doesn't take much to keep the place kind of damp in the winter. After all, we wouldn't have so much trouble with our roads and bridges developing bad cracks and potholes over the winter if there wasn't water to freeze and thaw.