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Hottest month's high and low: 28.3C - 41.4C
Coldest month's high and low: 6.6C - 19.5C
Sunshine Hours: 3,876.1
Rainy Days: 37.7
Rainfall: 210.6mm
In the other corner, cloudy Chongqing, possibly the cloudiest major city in the world. It exemplifies a striking difference between the moist subtropics of Australia and the USA versus those of China, Japan, and surrounding areas: where as the former have sun totals near the same as the typical Mediterranean climates, the Far East's subtropical zone's sunshine hours are often akin to north-west Europe and Alaska.
Hottest month's high and low: 24.7C - 33.6C
Coldest month's high and low: 6.0C - 10.3C
Sunshine Hours: 1,054.9
Rainy Days: 152.0
Rainfall: 1,104.4mm
That's less than half the sunshine of Seattle, less than all major European cities, and even most sub-polar oceanic climates that tend to rack up the cloudy areas. The only cloudier ''city'' I could find was Tórshavn in the Faroes. In other words, if you're a vampire with a taste for hot-pot, consider Chongqing!
[ Since I know there are more extreme stations in smaller locations, I took the choice of pairing the cloudiest major city versus the sunniest major city, choosing the ( admittedly arbitrary ) condition of a metro area of four million or more. I wanted to choose places where a lot of people actually lived rather than Some Anarctic Island versus Half-Dead Tree, AZ ( population: two tumbleweeds, one buffalo skull ). If there are cities of a million or more that are cloudier or sunnier, let me know! ]
All that being said - which would you choose? Sun city or fog town? Summers that bake or summers that steam?
Hottest month's high and low: 28.3C - 41.4C
Coldest month's high and low: 6.6C - 19.5C
Sunshine Hours: 3,876.1
Rainy Days: 37.7
Rainfall: 210.6mm
In the other corner, cloudy Chongqing, possibly the cloudiest major city in the world. It exemplifies a striking difference between the moist subtropics of Australia and the USA versus those of China, Japan, and surrounding areas: where as the former have sun totals near the same as the typical Mediterranean climates, the Far East's subtropical zone's sunshine hours are often akin to north-west Europe and Alaska.
Hottest month's high and low: 24.7C - 33.6C
Coldest month's high and low: 6.0C - 10.3C
Sunshine Hours: 1,054.9
Rainy Days: 152.0
Rainfall: 1,104.4mm
That's less than half the sunshine of Seattle, less than all major European cities, and even most sub-polar oceanic climates that tend to rack up the cloudy areas. The only cloudier ''city'' I could find was Tórshavn in the Faroes. In other words, if you're a vampire with a taste for hot-pot, consider Chongqing!
[ Since I know there are more extreme stations in smaller locations, I took the choice of pairing the cloudiest major city versus the sunniest major city, choosing the ( admittedly arbitrary ) condition of a metro area of four million or more. I wanted to choose places where a lot of people actually lived rather than Some Anarctic Island versus Half-Dead Tree, AZ ( population: two tumbleweeds, one buffalo skull ). If there are cities of a million or more that are cloudier or sunnier, let me know! ]
All that being said - which would you choose? Sun city or fog town? Summers that bake or summers that steam?
To answer your question first…I would of course go with Phoenix any day…as I think even the bravest heart would struggle in a climate with 1000 sun hours annually. Phoenix has a far nicer climate, sunny, warm, frost free, no snow, and interesting desert environments. 1000 hrs of sun annually...over time…would be a great challenge to most people.
As far as the “striking difference between the moist subtropics of Australia and the USA… versus those of China, Japan, ect”…in terms of sunshine your likely right, the American and Australian humid subtropical zones (Cfa) are significantly sunnier than their East Asian counterparts. However, if you also mean be moisture “rainfall”… I don’t think there is much difference in some stations. Many East Asian humid subtropical stations like Fuzhou, Shanghai, Osaka,…etc receive 40 to 60 inches of rainfall annually – not much different than humid subtropical stations like Sydney or Brisbane in AU…or New Orleans or Charleston in the USA. The biggest difference between the East Asian humid subtropics and the AUS/American sector - is that the winter monsoon is very intense in East Asia – forcing a drier winter compared to Cf stations in AUS/America.
Chongqing’s elevation close to 1000 likely contributes to its very cloudy skies. I don’t know what annual sun hrs are in cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, ..etc but they are likely nearly double the hrs of Chongqing. In fact, fall and winter are generally sunny and dry in much of East Asia…much more than a station like Seattle I would think.
Your threads always give me such hard choices! Both look absolutely miserable to me, but I think Phoenix looks a little worse. Lower humidity, but higher temperatures, longer periods of heat, and drastically more sunshine than I'd ever want. But for three months I'd probably be less comfortable in Chongqing, due to the still high temperatures but disgustingly high dew points. I guess I can only look at it like this: Phoenix has only about three months that look comfortable to me, and one of those is still warmer than I'd prefer, but bearable. It has two months that are just on the verge of being warmer than I'd prefer, so they're just barely tolerable. The rest of the year is a nightmare of epic proportions. Chongqing has five comfortable months, two tolerable months, and five months when I'd be constantly considering suicide. So I guess I'd choose Chongqing, but I'm not happy about it.
Chongqing’s elevation close to 1000 likely contributes to its very cloudy skies. I don’t know what annual sun hrs are in cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, ..etc but they are likely nearly double the hrs of Chongqing. In fact, fall and winter are generally sunny and dry in much of East Asia…much more than a station like Seattle I would think.
Shanghai and Hong Kong are roughly 1850-1900 hours; so not quite double but much lower than the US southeast.
Cloudiest month in Hong Kong is in March at 89 hours; cloudiest in Seattle is 52 in December. By percentage both months are similar. Early winter in Hong Kong is fairly sunny.
I think I'd rather spend a month on Campbell than even a few days in polluted Chongqing - at least its air is clean.
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