The SF Bay Area has the nicest weather year round, which is probably a strong contributing factor to why the area is so rich.
I'm currently in Tokyo. The temparetrue is not the nicest year round, but it feels very natural. There are four seasons. Winter is tolerable and it rarely goes below 0C. It snows about once a year. Summer is hot, just like it should be, but it hardly goes above 32C.
The only thing that bothers me is the rainy season in the summer.
Currently in San Diego with the windows and doors open, enjoying the slightly cool air coming in. Great place to live and seems like more tech companies are moving down. Sadly the housing and rent are becoming increasingly inaccessible.
I applaud the San Diego Water Authority's efforts to diversify their sources. The Carlsbad desalination plant receives the most local coverage, but it's the investments in reclamation that will be vital in the coming decades.
Yeah I think no question San Diego has the best weather of CA, followed by maybe Santa Barbara. South Bay LA (on the coast, not to be confused with South Bay, Bay area) is also usually really great and consistent year-round but if you go inland at all the weather can be dramatically different.
But you also get all the air pollution from the port of LA/LB, so thats why prices don't necessarily reflect the access like they do over in redondo beach or down in OC. Can't do anything about much of it either. When the city wanted to remove that breakwater recently that pins water pollution to the beach and killed the surf scene when they erected it decades ago, the navy said no, should they ever need to load explosives into battleships near downtown long beach.
I personally find SF Bay Area weather terrible, terrible. SF has the same weather year round and it is as follows:
* Uncomfortably warm during the day
* Uncomfortably cold during the night
* A lot of unpredictable and long-running showers, rain and fog
* A lot of cold wind year-round (especially summer, see below)
I found the following quote by Mark Twain very accurate:
> The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
I also personally experienced that, although summers and winters in SF have the same weather (as explained above) somehow summers tend to be colder especially during night and in shades.
It doesn't really make sense to talk about "SF Bay Area weather" given that most days there's a 10-30 degree difference between the coldest and warmest parts of the region. If you're near the coast in the summer, a typical "warm day" is mid-to-high 60s, while it's 75-80 in Oakland/Berkeley and 90s in Walnut Creek.
I lived in west SF (near Golden Gate Park/Presidio) for 2 years and I can count the days it was "uncomfortably warm" on one hand.
It's not really the same year round either. Summer is by far the windiest and foggiest season, which is why it feels cold despite a higher base temp (but again, depends where you are).
The Wikipedia page the post's author linked to has weather by month. I confirmed that SF had the coldest average temp in June and July. Mark Twain's apocryphal quote is backed by data.
I live in SF, and agree, it's quite rare when it is too hot during the day. It seems like the gp poster was referring to the SF Bay Area rather than SF. I work in the South Bay and while I hated the pre-pandemic commute, the warm spring/summer/fall weather (and Asian food) were the two redeeming factors. SF's winters were slightly milder than the mild South Bay winters.
As someone else pointed out, the South Bay of Los Angeles has better weather than pretty much anywhere else, at least in California (it is similar to the Mediterranean and Redondo Beach is known for its "Hollywood Riviera").
Supposedly Stanford was founded in Palo Alto after Leland Stanford Jr. hired a cartographer to look around the US to find the city with the best weather (maybe it was most sunny days). A bit too warm for my liking but it's pretty darn nice.
It's amazing how one comment can have so much wrong with it. Long running showers? Downright hilarious. It doesn't rain a drop here 9 months out of the year. When it does, it barely qualifies as a sprinkle. You could walk outside for 20 minutes and not even get soaked. "Cold wind" is the breeze that makes every day feel amazing and fresh.
>I found the following quote by Mark Twain very accurate:
> > The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
He never said this.
I love it but any reason that gets people out of here is great for me.
I lived in Berkeley for about 5 years and this was my experience. Some comments here argue SF Bay Area has different climates in different regions. I never realized this, but if it's true it might explain gaps in my comment (I still fully stand by it. No long running showers? Did we even live in the same place? Berkeley famously has days-long powder-like showers! I was absolutely sick of them when I was living there.)
It's disingenuous to conflate SF's micro-climate with the entirety of the bay area. I agree that SF weather is insufferable, and I live in San Jose, which is entirely different ... and different again that the mid/upper-peninsula, or the Santa Cruz Mountains, or Marin, or Berkeley.
I think what a lots of folks don't understand until they're living here is exactly how different things are in different areas around the bay.
Generally speaking, I think south bay weather is approximately ideal, if it wasn't for fire season, which can ruin entire summers & falls depending.
Even within SF the weather can be pretty variable depending on what part of the city you're in. My friend living in Richmond has a nice view of the ocean, theoretically, but it's pretty cold and cloudy out in the yard for a lot of the year. I live in the southeast side of the city near Hunter's Point, and we probably have totally overcast days in the single digits, it's basically always sunny and 70 during the day. It does get really windy for a good chunk of the day for a good chunk of the year, but our warmest days are during the spring and summer when that dies down.
My guess is when the candlestick park / shipyard redevelopment happens this is going to be prime residential real estate, it's the best weather in the city IMO.
The main problem with the California coast is that the water is so cold. Between NorCal and SoCal there is pretty much an ideal weather zone for everyone.
Cold water is only a problem the first few minutes. After that, it is refreshing. You find that out every single time you gave it a go and stayed. But when you don't, or the one time you went in and out immediately, are the times you remember when you don't have enough data points where you stayed.
The water is indeed cold most places here. But once you get down to Santa Barbara or better yet Long Beach you can find the occasional beach with warm water.
It's some combination of the very deep water being rather near shore and beaches that get directly blasted with the cold water streaming down the coast from Alaska. Remove/minimize those 2 factors and you can start finding warm water.
In San Diego around late August / early Sept you can find some really warm water relatively speaking. Particularly I used to enjoy going down to La Jolla cove and snorkeling around that time, with temps reaching up to 75f, which feels like bath water for the Pacific Ocean. Fairly certain I've experienced warmer than that a few times growing up.
Tokyo summers are miserable, as are the ones in Seoul and New York City. I have lived in all three and every July/August I wonder if this is the year I start cooling off in Bogota for a month.
all my american friends find it ridiculous, but yes, having lived my childhood in heat that you can see rising off the ground in the middle east, i love the pleasant 30-35C summers of NYC where i live now, especially when combined with the daylight deep into "night", like 8-9pm in June-August
San Diego is the gold standard for nice weather in California (and most of the planet), it is significantly better than the San Francisco area. I've lived in both and it isn't particularly close.
I couldn't disagree more, SF's weather is capricious (you always need a sweater, and be prepared to remove it and wear it back as you walk along the city and its many microclimates) and never warm enough (you like wearing shorts, flip flops, skirts, dresses, or just hang out in the evenings in the park? Nope, not going to happen). Because it's never warm enough, or cold enough, nobody has a heater or an AC, and when hot or cold days happen you're in for a real treat in your home.
I'm just saying that it's not for everyone, I'm looking to move out and weather is a big reason. I want to be able to drink and enjoy being in a park in the evening with my friends.
I hear "Japan has four seasons" a lot living there, but I don't get it. It definitely has summer. Leaves take 8 months to gradually fall from trees (if they fall at all) before summer starts again. There's no snow. And obviously there's no snowmelt or sudden greening in the spring.
You might be able to make the claim if your four seasons are "Summer, Typhoon season, Rainy season, Not-summer".
Obsessing over having 4 seasons is a theme that comes up in several cultures and I believe it is probably an ancient relic from when agrarianism was a nascent lifestyle upon which to base a civilization. Some nomadic cultures are similarly obsessed with the 4 cardinal directions.
There is snow in Japan close enough pretty much everywhere in the country if you are willing to drive a bit. For example, there's not much snow in Osaka but a lot in Kyoto and a lot around Nagoya, which are close enough.
Did you move there from SF? Do you work in tech? I'd be curious to hear how it is if so. My understanding is that they just announced they are going to let international travelers back in June.
Business visas are fine, I've had 5 people join my team from the US in the last few months. The June thing is for tourists, which are still not allowed in.
It's great as long as you work for a US tech company. The selection is pretty limited though. As far as companies with 'US adjacent salary bands'* you've got Amazon, Google, Indeed and now Doordash/Wolt (disclosure, I lead the eng org for DD/W in Tokyo). Also Stripe, I guess.
There are a number of Tier 2 companies which are pretty foreigner friendly but don't have the same level of pay - Rakuten, Line, etc. So if you're willing to compromise a little then there are a lot more options.
*By US adjacent, I don't mean literally as high as in the US, but maybe within 70-90% of a similar role in the states.
They haven't made a final decision yet regarding allowing international travelers, but as far as I understand it, they'll only allow tour groups first, and only the month after open up for tourists. (https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Japan-weighs-w...)
I moved from SF, I work in tech, it is awesome (but don’t work for a Japanese company unless you want to get underpaid and overworked, foreign firms are much better).
I'm currently in Tokyo. The temparetrue is not the nicest year round, but it feels very natural. There are four seasons. Winter is tolerable and it rarely goes below 0C. It snows about once a year. Summer is hot, just like it should be, but it hardly goes above 32C.
The only thing that bothers me is the rainy season in the summer.