Best winter weather? (compared, places, America, Los Angeles)
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Which city has the most pleasant winter weather? I am not going to include cities for people who love the cold, like Chicago as the results will be too anecdotal.
Miami obviously has the best in raw numbers, but honestly, it actually under performs relative to its location on Earth. Miami is near the tropics, at the bottom of a peninsula surrounded by some of the warmest waters on the planet (Gulf Stream), yet it has seen temps in the 20s before; that is inexcusable. A place like Miami should never even have gone to the 30s in the first place, let alone reach 20s.
I don't like the overall weather patterns in SW cities like LA, San Diego, or Phoenix, but I give them credit for at least performing well in their winters relative to their latitude.
Actually it's the opposite, Miami overperforms for its location.
There are almost next to no locations on earth classified as Tropical in the Koeppan classification system as far away from the equator as Miami is, and almost all of those other areas are in Southern Florida.
There are plenty of sea-level locations in the Tropics that don't have Tropical climates - eg Lima, Peru and Hong Kong.
The under-performance doesn't come from the average temps and winter warmth that Miami (and the US South) can see. Rather, it comes from how cold it can get (especially below the average) compared to similar locations in latitude on other continents.
So, Miami certainly has the winter warmth that can allow it to attain tropical status under Koppen, but it also gets colder than other sea-level locations on Earth at similar latitudes/situation; for example, neither Hong Kong, or Lima have seen temps in the 20s, despite being colder on average than Miami in winter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TastyCigar
Tampico, Mexico, also in the Tropics, has seen snow and 20s as well. Havana, Cuba (a city on a island in the tropics) has seen freezing temperatures before.
Yes, the entire North American continent east of the Rockies, and north of Central America underperforms in winter regarding how warm it should be staying. The fact that an island in a tropical sea reached freezing says it all, ffs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TastyCigar
What people don't understand is that Miami's climate is warmed by the warm gulf stream, and so winter instability is a possibility. When the wind direction changes to be off the north instead of the warm ocean, Miami's temperatures will fall down to more appropriate temps for her latitude. Obviously, Alberta Clipper's will cause the temperatures to plummet even more.
The winter instability (and thus under-performance) comes from lack of intercept to the cold air from the north (no horizontal mountain ranges, no large water body, etc); it just can go straight south through all the land, unmitigated, and bring cold to places that should be warm year-round, such as the Southern US.
Case in point, this South African city is at the latitude of Houston, yet has a higher record low than Miami, not even seeing freezing temps in its history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durban#Climate
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