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I think you need to make an adjustment, west of the Rockies, you should extend the latitude requirement to 35°N, Phoenix should be a 0, same for LA, and it is humorous that you have Dallas, Houston and New Orleans all LESS miserable than Phoenix or LA lol
Dallas sees snow every year, and even Houston and New Orleans get annual freezes; while Phoenix and LA are generally frost proof, LA never sees highs below 50 and Phoenix only sees a high below 50 every 4 years
I tend to agree...Phoenix and LA are great during the winter, New Orleans not bad but still some gray weather and plenty rain. Miami to be fair is really nice over the winter but I would probably give Phoenix a bit of an edge from my standpoint over Miami winter.
Very cool! I like this and yeah you could add additional factors like wind speed, snow etc. but overall, great creative idea. I do consider Minneapolis the most miserable winter location and Miami, Phoneix, & LA the 3 best cities in the US to spend your winter.
I like your formula, too. Results look reasonable. Interesting to see Denver, NYC and Seattle all about the same, their pluses and minuses feel like they all cancel each other and it's mainly personal preference? Though maybe there should be an extra downgrade on Seattle for having too many rainy days / hours?
I'm unsure whether variation makes the winter feel more severe or less; a Denver-like winter would provide more breaks from "normal cold" at the expense of occasional extreme cold
Agree with that. Variation also means breaks and a less boring experience. Here the winter is very stable (although we get the odd 16c day in January from time to time) and I would be happier if we had a week of arctic dry air followed by a week of snow followed by a milder week followed by regular humid cold, etc.
I guess people who live in climates which have really crazy variations would sometimes prefer more stable climates. I know I wish we had more different types of weather in a given winter.
Again, this is all extremely subjective, and the impressions can vary strongly even in relatively small areas. For instance here these days we get a lot of days with a completely uniform white sky with very low clouds and a very high humidity, which is something that's very rare in the city I grew up with where the clouds will have more different shades of grey and be higher with windier conditions. I definitely prefer the latter because I find that somehow it feels less dark and oppressive, but that's very subjective for sure.
'Raw/humid/windy' cold vs sunny/dry/calm cold are a lot different on the misery scale from my point of view. I would rate many winters in the Yukon (where it can be dark a lot, and very cold, but when it is cold it is usually dry, there is not much snow, and when the sun does come out even at 40 below it is a wonderful day) WELL above most winters in eastern Ontario for instance (where the rawness can go through your bones at a much higher temperature than it does in the Yukon). And close (but above) that eastern Ontario winter is that of far northeastern Nova Scotia - where it tends to be warmer, with less snow, humid and windy - but strangely perhaps I would still take a far northern winter over anything south of 60.
On the eastern side of the country, south of Pennsylvania I can't really think of any place that has anything I would even call a real 'winter' most years (and I say that with some experience to back me up - I have a house in western NC, drive back and forth to here through all the northeast/northeastern states at all times of the year, and lived in the DFW area as well for a number of years). On the other hand, this lady escapes the south for as much of the summer as she can - and I also usually escape the south in the winter too .. to a place which most likely would fall very high on the misery scale for many but I don't find that to be true for me.
On the western side of the country, I would say rainfall may be an issue for some in winter but I also lived in Vancouver and found that if rain didn't fall for than 3 consecutive days, I never 'felt' miserable but I admit it was usually warmer there than up north or down east and many years Vancouverites don't even see snow except at a distance. Edmonton can be rather bleak in winter but in great part I think that is due to it being 'exposed' to the wind/blowing snow type of cold weather that one experiences on a flattish plain (same with Regina, Winnipeg, most prairie cities, north or south of the border).
Not quite sure what you should include in your formula but I think it should be much more complex than what you proposed - and certainly humidity and windchill/windy days should come into it as much as average snowfall, etc. - and lack of sunshine (while some are subject to SAD as a result) doesn't constitute or even necessarily contribute to 'misery' in my books. Nor does temperature or latitude determine that much either by itself.
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