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Maybe I have overlooked the Snow Belt as a good place to live. The temps in Syracuse in winter don't seem to be considerably colder than NYC or Philly. More snow maybe, but i would assume people know how to drive in it up there (which is definitely not true for around here). But you get very nice summers.
10 degrees difference isn't that much in the winter. If its 25 in Philly and 15 in Syracuse, I am staying inside and drinking hot chocolate either way. But in the summer the difference between 95 and 85 could be the difference between Hell and a Relatively Pleasant Day.
I think the thing that irritates me about Philly/Jersey/Delaware climate is that its miserable in both the winter and the summer. I think I could deal with having one miserable season if the other end was really nice.
These places are not only colder in the winter than NYC but much cloudier. I think the sunshine percentage is about 30% as opposed 50-55% for NYC. It's the cloudiest part of the country outside of the Pacific Northwest.
I remember living in upstate New York and I'd see the sun for only a few hours each day during the winter and sometimes it would disappear for almost a week. And there was a month where the temperatures rose above freezing only a few times.
Pittsburgh might be better because it's not as cold though almost as cloudy.
Driving from NYC to Western Upstate New York, the cloud would start to appear somewhere in the middle of the Catskills.
Also, you won't get more nice days because cold leaves later and comes earlier. But if you like rather warm but not very hot days, the summers are wonderful.
These places certainly are cloudier. Another reason why I'm drawn to the climate.
My parents plan on retiring to Upstate New York (Lake Placid). I'd join them but I doubt the job market will be hot up there when I graduate in a few years.
I love the Adirondacks. Some of the towns up there are a bit dumpy, but generally it's a beautiful area (climate/scenery).
My impression is that NYC/Philly are much warmer in winter than places like Syracuse and Buffalo..
NYC averages 32F in January whereas Syracuse is 24F and Buffalo is 25F.. 7-8 degrees in my opinion is quite a lot... it can mean the difference between a heck of a lot of snow for Syracuse and Buffalo particularly because they are in the snowbelt....versus a little bit for NYC/Philly generally...
I know where I'd rather live...
Buffalo is a horror. I wouldn't mind a bit of snow, but 2.5m of snow is not my idea of fun.
Yet another person who buys the weather hype on Buffalo.
I came her 40 years ago and people at home swore the parking meters were linked together with ropes and that I would not be able to walk around all winter. I have only found one lady ( she is in her 90s now) who ever heard of the ropes and it was one short icy block in the windiest area of downtown in the Depression! (Nothing like Chicago wind, BTW)
We do not often get 2.5 meters of snow -- that would be over 90 inches. What Syracuse gets is more snow than us ( though we'd like the record some of the time).
We have a fairly nice climate all year ( though now it is very hot and humid -- a rarity) -- long spring and fall, reasonable summer and the worst months of cold ( as attested to by my heating bill) are Dec, Jan, and sometimes Feb. I spend more on the a/c in summer!
Anyone who wants to complain about Buffalo weather needs to come on a normal day ( not when the Weather Channel shows up and films at the airport fence across from their hotel when ther is a really big storm) and stay. One of the most beautiful things here in midwinter? Downtown at the marina and the Naval Park to see frozen waves or at Niagara Falls to see the spray frozen on trees.
Snow is no problem. We shovel it out of the way and it melts.
I'm semi-joking but the Philly & NYC metros do straddle that line between avalanche and pixie dust lol. I know the NYC area is very split with North Jersey typically getting 2-3 times as much snow as Long Island in a storm.
I know that kind of snowfall is rare for those cities and I know NYC/Philly can and do see more than a coating.
I was trying to find the average snowfall for the airports in these metros but I surprisingly couldn't find anything.
Last edited by Infamous92; 07-07-2010 at 09:56 PM..
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