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No, I don't think so. My mom is German-American and hates cold/cloudy weather. That's why we moved to Arizona when I was little....so she could escape the weather in DC (which really isn't that cold or cloudy compared to a lot of the country). My grandmother is from Germany and is the exact same way. I have friends who are British/Irish descent who prefer sunshine and hate the rain/cold too. This is just my personal experience, so this is not to say that there might be some correlation between ancestral heritage and climate preference as a whole.
From what I can tell, not really. There might be some small role that ancestral heritage plays, but people's individual preferences have far more impact on what type of climate they like. Often times, people related to each other can't agree.
For example, I'm of part German and part Armenian heritage, and I think that warm and sort of humid summer days are great (think like 90 degrees during the day and maybe 65 at night.) I also like snow. Go figure.
My ancestry is 2/3 British Isles with the rest being a split between Poland and Italy/Greece (most southern Italians have some Greek ancestry.)
I grew up in New Jersey. I always knew I didn't like winter but it took me a while to figure out why. I lived in NC then back to NJ. Lived in SC then back north to Philly. Then I lived in Queensland, Australia for a few years, then the Bay Area, now Orlando.
I don't mind the cold but I really dislike the relentless gray and the short days of winter in the northeast. Cloudy/rainy days here and there are fine but 4 or 5 days in a row with two days of sun then 4 or 5 days of clouds starts to wear on me. I could not live in Ireland or Poland and be well.
That Mediterranean climate is my preference - the Bay Area - especially the South Bay where it's a little warmer/sunnier/drier is amazing. So is SoCal. I've been to Barcelona, Valencia, Sardinia, etc. Spain and Italy and that's similar weather although further north than the Bay Area so a little bit darker and a little bit cooler in winter.
I like the subtropical climate only slightly less. Orlando has fantastic weather for about 6 months and tolerable weather for another 2. The heat and humidity from mid-May to mid-September is relentless. Brisbane has very similar weather during the dry (winter) season but in the summer the humidity is usually 10-15% lower and the temperature is usually 2-5F lower so the heat index is much different. I would definitely take that weather. Charleston is also great. Same hot summer situation as Orlando but it doesn't last as long.
I have ancestry from England and Hungary, but this is from generations back and I do not find either of their climates appealing. They are too cloudy for my liking and eastern Europe tends to have cold, bleak winters while the British Isles barely have true summer conditions at all. I think Budapest has some resemblance to Pittsburgh in terms of its setting and climate, which isn't my preference for the majority of the year but they are both great places to visit.
Atlanta's climate is pretty reasonable as it is varied enough to be interesting, has plenty of rain year round, adequate sunshine outside of the winter months and is not overly sweltering in summer like lower altitude/latitude parts of the South. I have lived in Austin previously which has more intense summer heat and erratic rainfall patterns. Southern California where I grew up tends to be comfortable in terms of temperature, but monotonous and overly dry for most of the year. All of these American Sunbelt weather regimes suit me better than my ancestral parts of Europe nonetheless.
I need to ask my ancestors why I was made with a system that doesn’t agree with winter. When it’s cold I get attacked with upper respiratory problem morphing into bronchitis and requires IV shots.-one factor I could never live in NYC again. You’d think the Japanese part is durable in cold winter.
I am (I think) maybe 4th or 5th generation but I know my ancestors are mostly from Germany with an assist from Ireland. I lived most of my life in New Jersey, but most of the last 18 in the Desert Southwest, and it's almost too cold for me here, and we get off cheap. Perhaps the equator would make me stop complaining about winter. Or at least Hawaii. But I do enjoy dry as well. So I guess that rules out the equator!
It might influence in the opposite manner. My ancestry was mostly coastal Europe and western Ireland. I prefer the low humidity 4-season climate of the high desert -- no ocean close by.
It's an interesting question. I don't know if there's any data on this, and there's no way it wouldn't be confounded by e.g. income inequality and racial diversity in different places, but I'd be interested if African-Americans in the PNW have higher rates of depression compared to AAs in the Southwest and Mountain West, where annual sunlight is much higher. (And specifically, if those differences in depression rates by region are greater than the differences in white depression rates)
Personally, I'm a white American mutt of Central/Eastern European nations, and I enjoy every kind of weather, including the baking Southwest heat that doesn't occur anywhere in Europe.
One of my best friends is Indian-American, and lives in the Midwest, and regularly goes for walks in below-freezing temperatures in shorts and a t-shirt.
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