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Having lived in both Houston and Seattle, I prefer the Seattle winter over the Houston summer but neither is ideal... For me the worst city weather in the country would probably have to be Buffalo, the cloudy day count is comparable to Seattle but the winters are significantly worse.
As a bit of weird factoid, that actually can happen in the world (generally around the Persian gulf), although it is pretty rare. In Dhahran in Saudi (home of Aramco) they had a dew point of 95 degrees with 108 degree heat which was close to 70% humidity (heat index of 178 which is much higher than 77% at 100). To your point though, in Houston I never saw humidity go above 45% if the temp was over 100
Agree about Seattle Winter vs. Houston Summer. My problem with Seattle wouldn't be the winter, it'd be the still quite cold and wet falls and springs. Grin and bearing it through the winter is one thing, but I'd personally go mad having temps in the 50s in May and June. I even feel that way about Denver, and I'd easily take its climate over Seattle's. Houston's humidity is insane, though. Austin is miserable enough and it's noticeably drier with more comfortable mornings and evenings compared to Houston.
Overall I look at coastal California as having a great climate, and the midwest/Great lakes areas a poor climate. After that everywhere in the continental US is decent, but with flaws, and it really depends on your personal preferences. For me I enjoy having warmth so the PNW is not it.
Agree about Seattle Winter vs. Houston Summer. My problem with Seattle wouldn't be the winter, it'd be the still quite cold and wet falls and springs. Grin and bearing it through the winter is one thing, but I'd personally go mad having temps in the 50s in May and June. I even feel that way about Denver, and I'd easily take its climate over Seattle's. Houston's humidity is insane, though. Austin is miserable enough and it's noticeably drier with more comfortable mornings and evenings compared to Houston.
Overall I look at coastal California as having a great climate, and the midwest/Great lakes areas a poor climate. After that everywhere in the continental US is decent, but with flaws, and it really depends on your personal preferences. For me I enjoy having warmth so the PNW is not it.
Winter in the PNW isn't at all bad. But yeah, I can agree that spring can be rough depending on the year. This year, Seattle had a very gloomy spring with very cool temperatures and some form of cloud cover nearly every day up until the summer solstice. It can be tough especially when the rest of the country is already enjoying the warm sunshine by mid May.
For me the worst city weather in the country would probably have to be Buffalo, the cloudy day count is comparable to Seattle but the winters are significantly worse.
I totally forgot about Buffalo! it's gotta be number 1 for worst weather in the country for sure
I totally forgot about Buffalo! it's gotta be number 1 for worst weather in the country for sure
Everyone has a different opinion about what makes the worst weather and climate.
For some, clouds, some cold, and snow make a place "worst."
For me, the worst places are the places which have hurricanes, tornadoes, river floods, derechos, dust storms, droughts, storm surge flooding, temperatures regularly over 90 and 100 degrees for months on end, heat index into the low 100s from humidity, dry places with wildfires and/or smoke, places where even the slightest hint of cold weather causes shutdowns and panic, and places that swing from tens of degrees below zero in the winter to the 90s and above in the summer.
My previous city checked off most of my "worst" boxes, with the only exceptions being derechos and wild temperature swings. But, I can also add in destructive winter freeze. So I will nominate Houston, or any Gulf Coast city really, for the honor or worst weather climate.
No, the worst climates are any in the southern 2/3 of the US, horrid levels of heat, humidity, too much sun, and too drought prone. The best climates in the US with a warming overall climate will be found in the northern 1/3 of the US that will have far less water supply issues. Cloud cover is zero issue, most Americans have Vitamin D deficiency in the winter that they fail to address by taking a basic supplement. Complaints about cold weather means many don't have the proper winter gear.
That’s true. What people ignore or more likely are not taught is that it is economics and politics that drove and drive the shift to hotter climates.
The capitalist class, in the 1960s, felt crippled by the political power of Europe’s working classes — the force behind essentially all progressive political change over the past two centuries, even if indirectly — and sought cheaper labour to restore profits. Given that long-time racial exclusivity (see e.g. the late James Löwen’s Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism) excluded Canada and the northern United States as a destination for cheaper labour, while remoteness and underpopulation excluded New Zealand and Southern South America, it was inevitable that the global elite would move to hotter climates.
The fact that Quaternary glaciations had not destroyed the natural resources of the hotter lands — whereas they had rendered Holocene Europe almost certainly the most natural-resource-poor continent in geological history — helped make it easier to counter the threat of class insurgency moving with manufacturing. So did the fact — related to lesser poverty in natural resources — that highly authoritarian regimes with greater surveillance than possible when Europe’s progressive working classes formed were already present in most of the hotter lands. More important, perhaps, for the global elite was the enhanced mobility provided by advances in transportation, so that they could rapidly move manufacturing away from any working class remotely as resistant to exploitation as Europe’s had been for over half a century.
As Jacobin Magazine notes here, it is precisely the weakening of class struggle related to the movement of industry out of Europe that has caused runaway global warming. However, as the higher latitude nations have not been politically able to lower their wages sufficiently to be competitive in manufacturing with newly emerging nations — doing so would mean changing Europe from the highest wages in the world to the lowest given its resource poverty and scarcity of flat land — it is not likely that even the most catastrophic climate change would reverse population movements to hotter lands.
I totally forgot about Buffalo! it's gotta be number 1 for worst weather in the country for sure
No, Oklahoma City still gets it for sure for having the worst weather all year round. That means tornadoes, big hail storms, flash floods, droughts and the unforgettable Christmas Eve Blizzard of 2009. The wind too often blows night and day. And now time for the heat wave to come on. Is Buffalo going to get up to 108 degrees next week? No way! The bad weather is, no doubt, the no. 1 reason why people refuse to move to OKC. At least the meteorology students at nearby OU must love the awful weather.
For me, Texas would be miserable, the summers alone are worse than freezing cold and snowy winters. I just cannot sustain 90+ degree days every day all summer long on top of "feels like I literally can't breathe" humidity.
I would agree that the eastern Great Lakes region is probably the worst for "worst winters and worst summers". Chicago at least doesn't get a ton of snow in the winters. Buffalo gets tons of snow and is freezing, and its summers are just about on par with Chicago.
For me, Texas would be miserable, the summers alone are worse than freezing cold and snowy winters. I just cannot sustain 90+ degree days every day all summer long on top of "feels like I literally can't breathe" humidity.
I would agree that the eastern Great Lakes region is probably the worst for "worst winters and worst summers". Chicago at least doesn't get a ton of snow in the winters. Buffalo gets tons of snow and is freezing, and its summers are just about on par with Chicago.
Great Lakes weather is very dependent on location - places East of the lakes may be cloudier and snowier in the winters, but are actually cooler, drier, and sunnier in the summers. Buffalo has made some lists as the "sunniest summer city in the Northeast" due to the effects of the "lake shadow" from Lake Erie that inhibits cloud formation downwind of the lake. Buffalo averages 5 degrees cooler in the summer than Chicago, averages 3 or fewer days at 90 degrees or above (vs 14 for Chicago), and it has never reached 100 degrees since records have been kept. Vineyards and fruit tree orchards are concentrated in Western NY and Southern Ontario due to the moderating influence of the lakes. Even Buffalo's famous "worst snow" varies greatly by location and elevation - heavy Lake Effect snow bands can be as narrow as 5 miles or less. Though average annual snow at the airport is 85 inches, the northern parts of the metro area (including downtown and north parts of the city) average 50-60 (on par with Minneapolis), while the southern parts of the metro can average close to 200 inches in the ski areas.
No, Oklahoma City still gets it for sure for having the worst weather all year round. That means tornadoes, big hail storms, flash floods, droughts and the unforgettable Christmas Eve Blizzard of 2009. The wind too often blows night and day. And now time for the heat wave to come on. Is Buffalo going to get up to 108 degrees next week? No way! The bad weather is, no doubt, the no. 1 reason why people refuse to move to OKC. At least the meteorology students at nearby OU must love the awful weather.
There definitely is a strong case for OKC being the worst.
There definitely is a strong case for OKC being the worst.
OKC is the most volatile but it's not the worst as far as being temperate. It is more temperate in the winter than almost any place north of it and it is generally more temperate in the summer as any place south of it.
So I suppose you could make a case that it has the "worst" weather but I can make a case that it doesn't. I'd rather by in OKC in the winter than I would in Minneapolis or Milwaukie. And despite the fact that it's really hot right now I'd rather be in OKC than in Arizona or the deep south in the summer.
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