Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is really interesting and well done - have enjoyed reading the responses as well .
What I have definitely noticed on this forum over the months is that climate preferences is a very subjective thing. I think you've covered the key areas well, but each area would need a weighting factor applied - these weights could be adjusted at an individual level so each person's final ranking would differ.
However looking at the final list, it looks like a fairly good compromise (to an extent) across all types of preferences .
I've also discovered that sometimes annual stats such as total rainfall, sunshine hours, mean temps etc wash out the smaller behaviours that occur on a day-to-day basis.
For example, two cities that each total 2,500 sunshine hours / year but one of them has relatively steady sunshine hours per day (e.g 7 hours with little variation day-on-day) whereas the other one has long stretches of clear days followed by long stretches of zero sun hour days - in this instance I would have a huge preference for the former city as find continuous cloudy stretches annoying.
I've tried coming up with my own "quirky" metrics for Sydney (my home town) so I can produce annual summary metrics which allow year-on-year comparisons to provide a richer picture. For example, number of zero sunshine hour days (ideally this should be at a minimum - again this is a behaviour that has a high weighting from my point of view), as well as a good spell / bad spell ratio, plus how variable the max temps are during the month, the degree of variance from the actual long term stats (a city that has a high level of variance from its long term stats each year is not desirable for me) etc etc.
At a guess, and if I had access to daily weather data for all major global cities, I imagine cities such as Perth and LA would come out quite high for me given I have a preference for sunny weather and stability .
Not bad...
Most climates are probably negative something in my system.
Toronto loses 18 pts for temperature and 23 pts for sunshine. (-41)
Vancouver loses 14 pts for temperature, 5 pts for precip and 25 pts for sunshine. (-44)
Vancouver actually exceeds 60% chance of sun though in July and August, while Toronto never does.
Interesting, so neither place is as bad as London (-2 points for dryness, -11 for winter and -33 for dullness = -46). I doubt anywhere would score 0. Even subtropical/equatorial climates with perfect temps/good sun would all have some months below 40mm or above 100mm I'd imagine. Longyearbyen would have every month too dry and dull with all of them losing a lot of points for temperature, so that would be the worst inhabited climate I could think of under those criteria.
I worked out London (Heathrow Airport) using the original formula and got 9.2.
Average sunshine for the past 30 years = 1628
Annual mean temperature = 11.4C x 100 = 1140
2768/300 = 9.226
No bonus or penalty points.
Ah, it's that argument from a while back about whether the sun hours are taken from Heathrow or Greenwich or whichever the place was that had just under 1500 hours...how there's a 10% difference between the two places I don't quite know.
Interesting, so neither place is as bad as London (-2 points for dryness, -11 for winter and -33 for dullness = -46). I doubt anywhere would score 0. Even subtropical/equatorial climates with perfect temps/good sun would all have some months below 40mm or above 100mm I'd imagine. Longyearbyen would have every month too dry and dull with all of them losing a lot of points for temperature, so that would be the worst inhabited climate I could think of under those criteria.
In hind site, I was being generous with my temperature designations.
Dropping 2 pts for each category over the same temp range would closer represent my ideals. (1, 3, 5 etc.)
Though if a particular climate is calm, sunshine could make a bigger difference.
If you're wondering what the cities of Nice and Lille are doing there, I've lived in both of them so I wanted to see how they compared with the others
I have always been fascinated by the climates/history of the Mediterranean. Adding a place in the French Rivera (Nice) was an excellent idea! Although I’ve made it to Paris several times over the years, sadly the area I want to see the most (the French Riviera), I only made it to once - in late November.
Considering the reputation of the climate of the French Riviera, the “sunbelt architecture” of the region…etc, I was bit shocked at the weather we experienced in Nice for more than 10 days in late November: It was pouring rain for the first few days, and temps were quite cool (highs were only in the upper 40’s). Then the next couple of days while the skies cleared and the weather was nice, it was not really what one would call “warm”, highs only made it to about 58 F (and night the temps plunged into the upper 30’s). To use a USA comparison, these temps are even cooler than the average temps one would find in late November in coastal areas like Santa Barbara, CA or Myrtle Beach, SC. Then the last leg of the trip, a front seemed to come through, a little rain fell again, and another swing in temps after the front. Obviously, I was not expecting low latitude warm, sunny stable resort weather (Miami, Honolulu…etc) with + 80 F temps, but I did think the weather would be a bit better.
I understand that being poleward of 35 latitude, much of the French Riviera has many middle latitude controls in its weather in the cold season and might lack the stability of true lower latitude subtropical climates. What were your experiences in terms of the climate in Nice on an annual basis? Is it warmer and more stable than what I experienced in late November on average?
Last edited by wavehunter007; 01-08-2011 at 03:24 PM..
3.3 for my town; two points deducted for each winter month, one for March and November for cold
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
.
.
.
