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A. A climate that does really well in whatever season you like, but really bad in the season you don't like. So for Winter lovers, you could have 70 inches of snow in the winter, but then you have a really hot and humid summer. Summer lovers such as myself can get a long, sunny spring and summer, but then you have a cold, dreary winter with lots of snow. So for 6 months of the year you love the climate and for 6 months you hate it.
Or:
B. A San-Francisco type climate, where its always sort of cool, you don't really have Winter or Summer. Or maybe a Seattle-type climate but a bit less rainy. Just generally cool and overcast but never really cold or hot.
One unenjoyable season is one too many. I much prefer a climate like the one here, with few extremes. It is generally comfortable outdoors year round.
Months of snow or cold, or Phoenix type heat don't appeal to me. Seattle type winters aren't much fun either.
I'd go for B (but then again the three people who've answered this all come from B climates). Our climate might not be exciting but at least there are few days where you can't comfortably spend time outdoors compared to Bangkok or Winnipeg or wherever.
I would probably choose the former. A place like Omaha, which gets a summer too warm for my liking, I rated a B. San Fran would be rated as a C for me.
If the summers are too hot or long in this "great and awful" climate, the climate would get downgraded to a C rating, but overall "great and awful" climates tend to do better than "constantly mediocre" ones.
I think for me it would depend on how extreme the cold in option A gets. I already live in a climate where the part of the year I enjoy going outside in is outnumbered by the part that I don't. In my climate, I would peg the part of the year "I like to go outside in" as May- September at most to be generous (highs at least in the 60s F) and that would be 5 months at best (3-4 months would be a more conservative estimate if I go by days when it's more in line with my preferences of near-70 highs). Places like New York city, Philadelphia and Washington D.C are already quite an improvement climate-wise than Toronto in my opinion. Maybe I might even like Omaha and other Midwestern climates with longer summers more than Toronto (though is if the transition seasons of fall/spring are too variable that there are too many days with t-shirt-and-sandals weather changing to freezing or nearly so within a course of the day I'd hate it and perhaps not pick it over a more stable climate).
So, I would take the climate with 6 months of solid weather I'd like (by I like, I will say highs consistently in the 70s F), but assuming the other 6 months I hate aren't that much colder than what I am used to. To be honest though there wouldn't be very many climates that have 6 months of the 70s, and then the rest of the year much colder than Toronto's November-April period.
I'd take San Fran or Seattle any day, to being caked in sweat during a long, hot and humid summer.
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