Rate the climate: Hilo, Hawaii (days, cities, degree, inches)
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F-. The perpetual summer gives it an automatic F, but the fact that the amount of rainfall is ridiculously high adds on the minus to the grade.
If I were ever to move to Hawaii (which I contemplate for my retirement years from time to time), you have the correct island, just the wrong side of it. From research I've done so far on the big island and Hawaii in general (which isn't overly extensive, but definitely something I've done), Waimea / Kamuela appeals to me most. Yes, it is a perpetual summer, but if this ever happens it is years away. I want to enjoy some more variety first. My wife on the other hand, we'll, we'd be moving to Hawaii yesterday if we had the money for it and it were completely 100% up to her. I'm not against it, I just really want to experience some more variety first! Especially after being in Seattle all my life, where our variety is rain, mist, drizzle, fog, downpour, cool and humid, overcast, partly sunny, oh look a sunbreak, back to rain, a month or two of dry sunny weather in summer, more rain again, mizzle, wind, and rain. Did I mention rain? Summers are gorgeous here, but the rest of the year can be nasty.
Eastern Washington, here we come! (Would love to spend a few years in Fairbanks, Alaska too, but the wife would never, ever allow a move there. I try to tell her it warms up very nicely in the summer, but the summer period is very short, the winters too extreme in coldness for her, and yea. lol).
D - boring temperatures. Rain and cloudiness are a plus, but I can find that elsewhere with much cooler temperatures. Temperatures aren't actually bad, just boring.
I'm sure it would be very nice to visit though. Hawaii is definitely on the bucket list.
Looking more closely at the rain amounts, I'll give this a solid C. If the rain keeps temps feeling somewhat cooler, then temps in the 80s year-round would be livable.
you don't mind that it has lower sunshine hours than Vancouver?
Sunshine is a secondary consideration for me. First and foremost are temperatures. Does it have a winter and does it ever get cold are the two most important questions I ask myself when I look at a climate. If the answer is yes to either of them regardless of sunshine hours, then it drastically reduces the grade of the climate.
In short, I can be happy in a place with 1000 sunshine hours if the average year round temperature is above 20C
Hilo, HI sounds like a tropical hell. Heavy rain year-round and very dismal sunshine hours. Possibly only a step up from London, England, but it appears gloomier than Seattle, WA and Scranton, PA. It deserves an F. Just because it's warm year-round, doesn't mean it's enjoyable. How can constant rain and overcast be enjoyable? Maybe to you, but definitely not for me. BTW - this is a subjective opinion so don't take it personally.
05-04-2011, 11:38 AM
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I would give Hilo a B-.
I like the perpetual summers without getting too hot.
I also like the high precipitation in some ways and don't find the sunshine hours that bad(1,900 sunshine hours) since the sunshine is equally distributed throughout the year, there is always tropical warmth, and when it is sunny it is tropical sunshine.
But I would still like a bit more sunshine and a bit less precipitation than that(90 inches instead of 130), and at least 2,500 sunshine hours instead of 1,900, so that brings this down to a B-.
For Hilo to get 130 inches of precipitation on average that is impressive it still gets that much sunshine for that. There are many places that are as cloudy or even cloudier than Hilo but with a lot less precipitation. (Lima for example gets average annual 1,500 sunshine hours but literally only ONE inch the entire year, Seattle gets only 37 inches on average with about the same amount of sunshine as Hilo. And London gets only 22 inches on average but 1,500 sunshine hours and Torshavn gets only 900 sunshine hours while getting 50 inches...)
But still, I would give Honolulu not that far away an A! Hilo is still not bad though.
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