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I've always had a desire to move to the US, or at least visit for long enough to get a good appreciation of the place, but have never been able to decide the ideal place to live. I was wondering where I could ask this question and came across this forum, which seemed like a good place to ask.
I come from England where (as no doubt everyone is aware) the weather can best be described using words with four letters or several asterisks.
Ideally I'd like to move somewhere with four distinct seasons, but the biggest issue is humidity. I'm a pale, skinny Brit that doesn't cope well with high humidity or very hot weather. In fact, even on so-called 'hot' humid days in England (i.e. anything over 25°C / 75°F) I can feel uncomfortable. A dry heat is more bearable but anything over 80°F is just a bit too much.
Sunshine in summer is important though - otherwise it's not really a summer. I'd also like to live somewhere with some interesting scenery as I'd like to go walking/cycling/exploring - forests, hills, mountains, lakes etc. A major/large city would probably be out of the question as a place to live although a small town that's close to one would be good. Cities in England just aren't on the same scale as ones in the US and the sheer size would probably freak me out.
Initially I thought the coast of Northern California would be good as apparently the summers are sunny and dry but warm rather than hot. However, the winters aren't cold and that means no snow - which is just as important to me as sun in summer.
To be more awkward, I wouldn't like extreme cold weather either. If it's getting below 14°F then it's not pleasant.
Are there any places in the US that provide a climate/geography similar to what I described (assuming it made sense), or am I just being too idealistic?
Apologies if anyone has posted a similar thread which I haven't seen.
well with snow usually comes extreme cold. Now there is places that get maybe an inch or two that it doesn't drop below 20 but its really not winter to me. I live in an area that gets lake effect snow so we get a lot and often but downside is we get about 50-60 days of full sun a year (partly sunny most of the time). Also snow is great to look at and play for a week or two than its a nightmare for the other 4 months of it with all the work that comes with it.
One suggestion is you could chose Northern California and take a vacation in the mountains to get the snow and winter feeling, or take a look at northern NY for cooler summers and longer winters... but spring is a short season. I really hope some more people could give you some better help than what i can do.
Northern California gets snow in the mountains.
You could also check out areas in Oregon and Washington.
Colorado might also be a good place to look into.
The Pacific NW sounds about right. Seattle, Portland and that area.
I work with a LOT of Irish, Scottish, and British (and yes, one Welsh) expats who say that the weather here reminds them most of home. What's great is that if you want skiing then it's only 40 min - 1 hr drive depending where you live.
Maybe parts of the Interior Northeast could work too. Maybe someplace like the Allentown PA area, which puts you by the Pocono Mountains, plenty of hills, but trips to NYC or Philadelphia are both within 2 hours or so. It is a big enough area where you may have enough to do there as well.
Albany NY may be another area to consider for similar reasons(Adirondack, Catskill and Berkshire Mountains, Boston and NYC both are 2 hours away or so, big enough metro, etc).
Denver is about the closest to your ideal, just being a few degrees too warm during the summer.
Seattle/Portland aren't associated with snowy winters. Just damp, wet and dark winters. They do get snow every other year or so... and can't handle it for squat. Portland suffers from ice storms. Seattle does ices up during the snowy events which makes it a pain because it's so frickin hilly (you can U-tube Queen Anne snow and watch the cars go crashing).
Thanks for the replies. Denver (or at least a smaller town/city not too far away) sounds like a possibility but I'd probably have to go there for a short time in the summer to check out how warm it gets before considering moving there for longer.
Seattle would probably remind me of home but I think moving to a place in the US that is similar to England (at least in terms of weather) would be missing out on a lot of what the country has to offer.
Oregon has always interested me as I rarely hear much about it, yet when I've seen it in films, documentaries or on TV it looks like a beautiful state (although pretty much every state has something to catch the eye).
Allentown seems nicely located but has humid summers, which seems to be the case for quite a lot of the US except the more arid climates which seem to have real temperature extremes.
Denver or the Pacific Northwest. Granted, the PNW doesn't get as much snow as the east. I'd also recommend Flagstaff, AZ. Summers days dry and in the 80sF. Snowy winters too, due to the elevation.
Denver or the Pacific Northwest. Granted, the PNW doesn't get as much snow as the east. I'd also recommend Flagstaff, AZ. Summers days dry and in the 80sF. Snowy winters too, due to the elevation.
Flagstaff has a monsoon season in the summer, according to this site:
When I first googled it, I thought, yeah! It has the perfect temperatures...but then I saw the rainfall.
I was thinking Bellingham, WA, too, but it's got the same problem. It's mild in the summer because it's cloudy and rainy most of the time. I used to live there. We used to joke about how many different ways the radio forecasts could describe precipitation. It is a beautiful university town with the San Juan Islands in view, and very close to Vancouver BC or Seattle. But, depressing weather most of the time.
I've lived in Portland and Seattle (cloudy, rainy, icy and not much snow), and a little town called Trout Lake next to Mt. Adams in the Cascade mountains, and even there, it's hot in summer, but the joke there is that you get 9 months of winter and 3 months of bad sledding. In other words, a very small window of anything besides rain and snow.
I know the west coast, and even Lake Tahoe wouldn't be perfect for you. Hot summers, cold winters. Beautiful, but extreme temps.
It's like in order to get sunshine in the summer, you'll get too much heat if you are anywhere that also gets snow.
I guess you'll have to figure out what matters most to you.
I also thought about the gold country in the mountains on your way out of Sacramento towards Lake Tahoe or Reno, like Placerville or Auburn, and it's hot up there in the summer, too. And not a lot of snow, but you'd sure be close to snow.
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