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Do you like the humid East coast climates better, or the dry climates like Arizona and Colorado? I have never lived in a dry climate, so I am wondering if I would find it better or worse than Pennsylvania.
What I see as the key pros/cons are:
Humid climates are very nice in the summer, but awful in the winter. They are cold, rainy, and depressing from late October until mid to late April. Sometimes we even get cold and rainy days in May. But late spring and summer are spectacular. Everything is green. Summer afternoons are sometimes too hot, but nights are perfect. Nice and mild, perfect for drinking a cold beer and watching baseball.
Dry climates seem to have nicer winters, but they don't really have a summer (with the exception of the desert in Arizona.) In places like Flagstaff, Denver, Salt Lake City, etc, it seems like the nights are never really warm. I was reading weather stats, and average lows are in the 50s. Seems like you would always need a sweatshirt. I guess the afternoons are nice, but that just seems a bit too cold for summer. I don't know if i would enjoy swimming or cooking outside or having ice cream as much. I have never lived out west so I could be wrong about this.
Sorry, i just realized i posted almost the exact same question a few months ago. Oops.
No worries. There are only so many new weather related topics anyway. Lot of dead horses here.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I agree with your assessment. The West is so large and diverse as to make any comparison difficult. But in many places, except California and Arizona, winters are not what you would call warm. Denver is not bad give its elevation but in absolute terms it is colder in winter than Philly (same latitude). It also gets more snow.
Summers are typically hotter out west but they are less humid so you feel less hot and sweat less. Cooler nights make living without AC bearable.
It's hard to say for me... I like heat anytime, so I think I could be happy in both the east and the western US. In the east, I think South Florida would be perfect as it stays warm to hot all year long. In the west, I could live in a place like Phoenix or San Diego. It's all about the temperature... humidity is a secondary consideration for me.
East. CA is nice, but it's a bit monotonous. The cold winters of the North-East would be unpleasant, but then they have snow, which might make them preferable to the dreariness of OR / WA.
Having lived on both coasts (Santa Monica and now coastal southern New Jersey) there is more than meets the eye in a coast to coast comparison:
While there is some difference in climate between the southern and northern parts of the West Coast (San Diego compared to Seattle)…there is a huge difference in climate between the southern, middle, and northern parts of the East Coast. I never know this until I moved to the East Coast. A place in Maine or Massachusetts gets twice as much snow as say Long Island or Wilmington, Delaware…and by the time you get around Virginia Beach, VA there many winters gets zero snow. One of the things that I like on the East Coast is there is 12 months of summer in south Florida (the warmest winter spot in the USA)…so you are always a day away by car away from summer on the East Coast. On the West Coast, often in December when it’s cool and wet (in the 40,’s 50’s)…there isn’t a lot of change from Seattle right down to central California. Only when your way down near Orange County/San Diego is there really semi-warm weather in winter (although still 15 F colder than Florida on average). The only area of the USA that really has beach weather in winter is on the East Coast (south Florida).
Also, we (in CA) always seem to hype of the winters in NYC or DC on the West Coast (we love to do this), but truth be told, your talking 90 days of true clod or snow (in some years places from NYC south get less than 10 inches all winter). Also, our summers (mostly early summers) have crappy weather on the CA coast. Many times I would call friends in NJ or Maryland in early June who where sitting on the beach and it was 85 F…while I had a jacket on the beach in Santa Barbara and it was 58 F windy, cool, and cloudy. We try to minimimize the May Gray, June Gloom…but early summer on the CA coast feels more like spring on the East Coast. Also, the Pacific is freezing compared to the Atlantic.
Difference on the East Coast is even more significant once you go a little bit inland. For example, yearly average temp in NYC is 54F. In Sussex, NJ (about 50 miles away) it is not even 48F. Upstate NY and inland New England can be brutal in winter.
Difference on the East Coast is even more significant once you go a little bit inland. For example, yearly average temp in NYC is 54F. In Sussex, NJ (about 50 miles away) it is not even 48F. Upstate NY and inland New England can be brutal in winter.
I agree…upstate NY, inland New England, and even the hills of NW NJ are much colder/snowier than the more southern/coastal areas of the Tri-State area and points south. The line seems to be around southern Connecticut: Winters from southern Connecticut south on the East Coast are not too bad…north of southern CT it turns cold/snowy quickly. For example, Bangor, Maine gets 120 –inches of snow each winter on average…Worcester, MA gets 75 –inches of snow…but NYC or Bridgeport, CT get only about 22-inches of snow on average.
Reason enough for me to never live much north of Connecticut.
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