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RECORD HIGH: 48c
RECORD LOW: -40c
DAYS WITH RAIN: 25
DAYS WITH SNOW: 140
DAYS WITH FOG: 20
DAYS WITH FREEZING RAIN: 5
BUILDINGS WITH FLAT ROOFS: 0
Karamay Bay exists in a very peculiar location: deep in the heart of an Asia-like continent with a strong monsoonal wind regime, just south of a very deep inland sea akin to the Caspian but deeper, and just north and east of chain of very high mountains that block all tropical and westerly moisture.
From May to September, strong southward flowing winds bring hot, dry air, with the inland sea providing little moderation. Hot spells can be made intense by fohn-type events off the mountains. Humidity is very low and rain a rarity, late-spring thunderstorms dropping off the last few drops in April and early May.
Beginning in November, strong north winds push over the sea, gaining huge quantities of moisture in the process that the mountains squeeze out first as rain, and quickly after, as snow. Huge quanities fall over the next month until ice begins to form in February, though the sea never fully freezes over. At that period the monsoonal winds start to weaken, beginning to reverse just as the winter's snow has fully melted. ( Spring flooding, however, is inevitable... )
As can be imagined, the residents have a very active snow-removal program, running twice or thrice daily to ensure the locals aren't literally buried alive in the cold months. Conversely, argiculture is big business, as plants are shielded from extremes by the great snow-cover, which provides water resuorces through the hot, dry summer months.
Would you like to live here? How would you rank it? I think it would make great photographs, even if scarily cold for my tastes.
( I got the idea of fusing Asian monsoonal systems with a merger of Japanese locations in Hokkaido and Sea Of Japan-side Honshu, Caspian sub-tropical forest, Indian monsoonal wind directions, and west-China continentality. It's an absolutely impossible climate in current continent positions, but not unearthly if things were placed another way. )
Winters are perfect, meeting my cold requirements and having plentiful snowfall, but the Spring warms up too quickly and the Summers are way too hot for my taste. It's also a tad too dry. I'd ordinarily give it a C but the abundant snowfall gives it a rare bonus, bumping it up to B- on my scale. If the Summers were cooler during the day and had much cooler nights, it would be a great candidate. On the livability side, it looks like a surprisingly hospitable place to build a city, with all the water resources available. Despite the summer heat, it would be a neat place to live.
Hypothetical situations with monsoonal flows unlike anything seen on present-day Earth are always fascinating, and I have a few fictitious climates like this myself, including one far more extreme than this one. The 1700 inches of snow per year that one boasts of makes the sea-effect snow of this place look like a flurry .
B-. The winters are about like ours, just a touch colder and about 30% snowier. The summers are just too hot and dry.
Funny that you said zero flat roofs. Most of the commercial and government buildings here have flat roofs because they're very easy and safe to remove snow from. With very high snowfalls, shedding roofs build up berms that will quickly reach the eves and prevent more snow from shedding until it's cleared away. They also don't shed well when it's cold and will build up snow either until you have to shovel it anyways (which can be quite dangerous on a steep metal roof) or it warms up and allows an enormous, potentially dangerous amount of snow to slide off. Most houses here have shedding roofs, but in really high snow years like this one they can be a lot of trouble.
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