If your methodology for identifying "cities with nice weather" returns Reykjavik in its top ten, either your sample only includes places with terrible weather, or your methodology is completely whacked.
Reykjavik is a wonderful little city, but it's cold, extremely windy, and often very miserable.
The place with the most pleasant weather I've ever experienced is probably the area around the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia (at least, most of the time - they've had an extraordinary run of flooding rains, recently). 70 degree Fahrenheit maximums in the winter, 82 in the summer, warm-water beaches, sea breezes to take the edge off the humidity - and there's mountains next door you can recreate in during summer to take the edge off. What more could you possibly want, except possibly snow if you're one of those weirdos who likes the stuff?
A more appropriate methodology would take into account wet bulb temperatures, rainfall amounts, hours of sunshine, and wind (aside from its effect on wet bulb temperature a howling gale is unpleasant in its own right).
Still, given the poster's starting point was Toronto...well...
Having spent meaningful time in Reykjavik… hard concur. Seeing Dublin and Chicago in their target range simply reinforces the doubt. The bad assumptions start with average temp, but this is where it goes off the rails:
> Let’s see the same plot, including only the cities within one degree of Toronto’s average temperature.
So theyre really looking at “cities with an average temp similar to toronto, but lower variability.” That is certainly one wag to look at weather, but Id be hard pressed to accept its “nice.”
All this comunal reaction against OP's methodology makes me smile. After spending miserable weeks under, sometimes tree shades but, most of the time, hot Brazilian sun observing whet bulbs, anemometers and what not, during "Environmental Comfort" class at Architecture school, I could not help myself felling anything other than pure hatred towards OP's assumptions and overall lack of understanding of what "nice" means. So again, it doesn't come often, but HN people, you made my day, thank you.
Well the thing about Dublin at least, you're unlikely to get six foot snow banks, or Chicago style freezing winds. But it's got the most bland weather both summer and winter. Never been to Iceland, but I guess the clue is in the name there!
Oddly, Iceland rarely if ever gets really cold and even snow is mostly transient. Temps mostly hover between 0 and 10 C (30-50 F), and it rains quite a bit.
It has often been suggested that the names of Greenland and Iceland should be reversed, and/or that "Greenland" was thus misnamed for marketing purposes to entice Viking settlers.
Iceland is cold, but a very enjoyable kind of cold. There's this crispness in the air in Reykjavik which I always liked a lot. It's actually super fun to walk around the city or even away from the city. I dread the extreme winters of American cities though.
Assuming Dublin is pretty similar to the UK, it's the blandness that gets you. I'll take inconvenient variety over months of grey, dark dampness anytime.
Similar enough, but tends to be ever so slightly more bland than even the UK. If I remember rightly Ireland has the highest lows and lowest highs of anywhere in Europe.
Seriously, if Californian coastal cities are not predominantly featured, there's something wrong with the methodology.
Whether you like chilly Eureka, temperate San Francisco, moderate San Diego, or warm Los Angeles, you can't get more consistent weather than out here in California.
No wind is factored in this equation.
That kills Reykjavik.
From page:
"Next Steps:
It would be interesting to use detailed time series for each city and a utility function on temperatures (perhaps including wind chill and humidex) to determine which cities are truly mean-variance optimal."
Yep, was there in this February and while the temperature is not bad (bring hand warmers), there were multiple wind storms. One of them was so bad that you simply couldn't walk. Otherwise a wonderful city.
Different people like different weather. For me e.g. Edinburgh has the perfect weather (I'm planning to move there). Where I am currently (Poland), I'm miserable in the summer, when humidity drops as low as 40% and temperatures get above 25°C (up to 33°C, or even 42°C in some godforesaken parts of the country). For me to feel comfortable, 22°C is the max (-5°C is the soft min, but will also take -20°C over 30°C), humidity should be at around 70% optimally (don't mind if it's higher than that) and definitely not lower than 50% (breathing gets less pleasant). I also prefer it when the sky is cloudy. Clear blue sky makes me feel as if I was living in a Windows XP wallpaper (kitchy) honestly, and it usually means in the middle of the day there is too much non-diffused light around (looks mildly worse aesthetically in my eyes, a lot worse on photos, and subconsciously I feel attacked by the rough changes in strength of light in different places, with it being really intense in some places, but practically non-existent in others).
I lived in Edinburgh for 3.5 years and rn I have moved back to Poland. The summers in Edi are great for working, most of the time it is very slightly below t-shirt weather. However, the weather oveerall is really bland for my taste. I enjoy the variety of winter snow and summer heat.
Also, once in a while it is very windy which is not too pleasant. The air feels fresh as well because it is somewhat windy all the time. I remember stepping out of the plane from Edinburgh once and feeling a weird sensation of quietness in my ears - turned out my ears just got used to constant wind.
I remember a colleague who I worked alongside in Edinburgh commenting that his first impression coming from Spain was how quickly the clouds move here.
Definitely, I live in South Africa which is probably a bit warmer than you'd like. When it hits low 22°C's in the evening then its about time for me to go and find a jersey.
Not really, rather people get used to where they have to live and then rationalize the fact that they "like it" because they don't really have a choice.
That doesn't square with the fact that people who can afford it choose wildly-different places based on weather. Loads of people move from places like Edinburgh precisely due to weather, and move somewhere which is hotter, drier and sunnier, while I and some other people do the opposite.
Other things factor into moves besides weather, even when weather is a factor. Certainly there is variability but it seems pretty clear that warmer, sunnier, areas are most desirable based on the costs of housing.
When you really start looking at people with true choices, i.e. the very rich, they want moderate weather with hot enough summers for water sports to be a viable activity, but nice enough that other outdoor activities aren't prohibitively hot and extreme weather isn't a concern.
A good example of this is Lake Oconee Georgia. It's basically bumfuck nowhere yet there's a plethora of multi-million dollar homes because the weather and geography are what falls in the ideal range for most people. So of course it's generally inaccessible to the average person but the super wealthy are gating it off and enjoying it.
people live places with various seasons and often have a favorite season. Their favorite is not always the longest season as well, which kind of throws out your rationalization theory.
In fact, this post wouldn't exist if what you said is true.
Also, hours of daylight in winter is a factor. I was in Reykjavik for Christmas once and there was about 4 hours of sunlight each day. It confuses the body.
That's what people always seem to be concerned about… but the real problem up north is the eternal summer days. Enjoy never getting a night's proper sleep!
It actually isn't, because most home lighting is far less intense than the sun and the wrong spectrum to boot. Light therapy works but sitting in front of a big bright box is not terribly convenient or fun.
And if your blackout curtains don't work, get better ones. Many Nordic households have double curtains, one solid plastic to block the vast majority of the light and the other from cloth to diffuse/block the rest and look pretty.
No it isn't. Sunlight is an important source of Vitamin D, which affects immune system, hormones, and mood. There are special lamps to supplement this, but it is not so trivial as turning on "lights".
You want “ Blackout EZ - Total Sunlight Blocking Window Covers” (available on Amazon) which seal to Velcro strips that are mounted around your windows with screws, and a DIY hard shell window valence above that, plus blackout curtains over that just so it doesn’t look so stark. That’s what I do.
One of my best investments ever was a good sleeping mask. These do not let any light in (even around the edges if it's a good fit), and unlike blackout curtains they're portable.
I'm curious to try a solution such as electrochromic glass, but to get a better blackout the glass seems to need to be tinted. But on the Dreamliner plane, they seem to have solved this. Not sure if it's just uneconomical at a house scale.
It's not really that confusing if you actually live there. Speaking from experience, since I grew up further north than 99% of the world population (Reykjavík would be down to the south).
Also, you can't just consider temperature without humidity. The way you feel about temperature depends hugely on the humidity levels in the air. This article is a very simple analysis, it's a lot more complex than that if you want to make reasonable choices.
My personal preference is definitely for colder temperatures than most other people would like.
I didn't include humidity, precipitation, wind, etc., mostly because I threw this together in an hour or so and didn't intend for it to be a "serious" analysis, just a novelty.
>If your methodology for identifying "cities with nice weather" returns Reykjavik in its top ten, either your sample only includes places with terrible weather, or your methodology is completely whacked.
Or you have different opinions than most people, for example I tend to really dislike summer in most places because I dislike hot weather more than I dislike cold weather, even here in Denmark I dislike summer.
My takeaway from reading Grænlendinga saga and Eiríks saga rauða was that Iceland is where you went when you got kicked out of Norway for killing too many people, and Greenland is where you went when you got kicked out of Iceland for killing too many people.
climate change, man-made or otherwise, and the need to adapt pushed humans beyond the conventional borders of their tribes/clans. however, the precipitating event on the move from the mainland was a lot of murder.
I think the edition I read mentioned that the Norse society in Greenland dwindled to nothing because of an inability to adapt to the conditions created by the Little Ice Age; sounds like this podcast has the same idea.
I didn't think anyone would post this to HN when I wrote it, so I certainly wasn't baiting clicks, except perhaps from the friends with whom I shared it directly.
Yes, that also immediately focussed my attention… We have friends from Iceland and I have since added Reykjavik to my weather app — to feel good that weather there is even more miserable than where I currently am, wherever that may be.
An obvious topic that seems missing from “good weather” is the amount and duration of rainfall.
The starting point for temperature and humidity should be the thermal comfort zone on a psychometric chart [0]. Wind can be considered in this too (see the 'natural ventilation' section). Hours of sunshine and rainfall should be separately measured.
The model is clearly simplistic, but if you made me write out my ideal range of temperatures through the year, Reykjavik is perhaps a few degrees too cold month by month. Centering on freezing for the winter, just warm enough for a jacket during the summer, it's just about ideal. Wind isn't great though, I'll give you that.
> A more appropriate methodology would take into account wet bulb temperatures,
Are there any recommendations for accurate API accessible wet-bulb temperatures across the world?
I've been looking at this website for India[1] during the heatwave and I'm not sure whether its accurate. Also, is there any reproducible DIY project to measure wet bulb temperature with a digital output for daily use.
As a Queenslander, the crime rate on the Gold Coast, particularly around Surfers Paradise, subjectively feels a bit higher than other cities of a similar size. (It’s still nothing too bad, nor am I looking at objective data currently.)
Fair enough, and that's a reasonable question for the broader topic of "livability" (which as I'm sure you know there are global rankings for), but I personally wasn't considering "crime rates" as part of "weather".
"Partly cloudy. Medium (40%) chance of burglary, most likely later in the evening. Light winds becoming south to southeasterly 15 to 20 km/h during the morning."
I know a few people who wouldn't live anywhere else after settling in Slacks Creek up in the hills behind the Gold Coast.
Personally I'm more a Sunshine Coast person. But the money however seems to have discovered Byron Bay: A few of the lower-lying coastal towns flood frequently though.
The author's model doesn't really say that Reykjavik is a good option. From my understanding, the graph shows the cities which have less variation than all cities colder than them.
Are you implying the IS/LM curve is representative of the trends seen in macroeconomic data? (And not a normative description of what a select group of people think the economy “should” look like?)
I’d be interested to hear more about why, since you say my claim has no basis.
If you don't have a snowy winter, you probably have a blistering hot summer. I can always get a beefier winter jacket for the cold but in the heat, there are only so many layers I can take off before being arrested.
What? Snow is way worse. There's basically no comparison.
If it rains, you can still drive, walk and cycle. If it snows, your car will get stuck in the snow, your bike will get stuck in the snow, and you will completely soak your boots and pants as you slog through the snow.
Things get somewhat improved when they plough the roads, but the big problem with ploughing is that it polishes the road surface. So if you're walking or cycling, you're constantly in danger of slipping, and it's much harder to control and stop your car. And obviously if you live where it snows, you have to switch between summer and winter tyres twice a year in order to deal with it. Haven't heard of people switching between tyres because it rains.
If you're walking and it snows, you basically want to wait until someone ploughs the roads and then carpet bombs it with grit. Grit that will stay around when the snow melts and has to be cleaned up. And when they clean up the grit, it kicks up a bunch of dust and you get to breathe it in.
I don't think the elderly start falling and breaking their bones whenever a rainy season starts somewhere, but they most definitely do when it starts snowing. The couple of times that I've hurt myself in the past years have been because of snow and ice. My grandma got put in a wheelchair after breaking her leg in icy stairs.
That snow also has to be stored somewhere, so the sides of roads, sidewalks, parking lots, will all be full of massive piles of snow that will obviously eat away space that you could otherwise use. A whole sidewalk might turn into a one-person wide path.
If you're driving and it rains, it'll wipe off pretty easy. If it snows, it wipes off way worse. And if it's heavy snow, it will actually get stuck in the wipers and basically make the wipers useless. Obviously heavy rain is also an issue for visibility, but at least your wipers won't stop working.
And when spring comes, the snow melts and everywhere it wet for weeks. And since it usually fluctuates above and below 0°C, that water will freeze, melt, freeze, melt, freeze, melt, which is once again a shitty experience for all road users.
There's so many downsides to snow that I can't probably think of all of them right now.
I think it really depends. Here (northern Germany) you don't really get a lot of snow. So a bit of snow & the accompanied very dry weather is significantly nicer than the cold, damp ~0-5c rain you'd otherwise get in winter. The snow usually doesn't pile up high enough to really be a problem.
So the choice here is "slightly below 0 with a bit of snow" or "slightly above 0 with rain". It's not like crazy canadian levels of "a meter of snow and -30c" type situation.
It's possible, but it's still more difficult and dangerous. I have cycled in Finland in the snow, and it is objectively worse than in the dry or wet (albeit better than it is here in the UK).
For example, cycling across parks or crossing between lanes, there's usually the odd snow drift or edge between the ploughed lanes. If you're not careful, you can lose traction going across those or even it can be frozen solid and you can hit it like a kerb. Then when it's just starting to get cold, before the streets are being gritted, you're much more vulnerable to black ice patches.
Even on a well ploughed, gritted surface, the grip is still nowhere near comparable to the rain. As a bonus, the grit is really harsh on your bike's drivetrain, so you have to wash your bike thoroughly every time you ride.
I don't know how many times I have been linked this video, but it is several, and I imagine almost all of them have never actually cycled in Finland during the winter. But I have, for many years, and I can tell you that it does in fact suck!
If the cycle paths are not plowed, you basically have no forward momentum, and even if you manage to cycle in it, your bike will refuse to go straight, especially when the snow is wet. And if they're plowed, they're still slippery to a point that wet asphalt could never be. Ever had to hard stop a bicycle on the snow because a car pulled in front of you? Not fun.
Snow gets behind my glasses and into my eyes, blows into my ears, and gets blown into places that rain wouldn't normally reach, which then melts and gets wet.
This means you need to seal yourself up much more rather than just getting an umbrella. It also is much more difficult to cycle in and covers up the street markings.
I love how snow looks but then whenever I go out in it, I remember how much I hate it.
Reykjavik is a wonderful little city, but it's cold, extremely windy, and often very miserable.
The place with the most pleasant weather I've ever experienced is probably the area around the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia (at least, most of the time - they've had an extraordinary run of flooding rains, recently). 70 degree Fahrenheit maximums in the winter, 82 in the summer, warm-water beaches, sea breezes to take the edge off the humidity - and there's mountains next door you can recreate in during summer to take the edge off. What more could you possibly want, except possibly snow if you're one of those weirdos who likes the stuff?
A more appropriate methodology would take into account wet bulb temperatures, rainfall amounts, hours of sunshine, and wind (aside from its effect on wet bulb temperature a howling gale is unpleasant in its own right).
Still, given the poster's starting point was Toronto...well...