[mck-]

Weather here is amazing! Vancouver has such a bad rep when it comes to rain, but honestly it's not that bad. Here's what it's really like:

Between May and October, basically half of the year, you'll have very comfortable T-shirt weather, and blue skies I'd say 70% of the time!

Between December and March it's gloomy, but you'll have awesome snow in the mountains, just 30 min from downtown :) from our office we can see the slopes. Just went skiing with the team 2 months ago.

Vancouver is one of the few cities you can ski in the morning and lie on the beach in the afternoon, grilling BBQ and play beach volleyball.

Life's not that bad! I've been here 5 years :)

BTW, if anyone is in town for the YC interviews, I'd love to show you a good time!

[jessewmc]

The temperatures are very moderate in the winter, but the rain is bad. It can, and does, rain for multiple consecutive weeks in the winter. The lack of sun is even worse. It can have a very real effect on mood if you're from somewhere that gets more reasonable amounts of sunlight, which is pretty much anywhere else in Canada.

I lived there for four years and I had a very tough time with the lack of sun. It can be very oppressive. Vancouver has a lot of things going for it (as you mentioned) but I think it's unfair to gloss over the overcast weather.

[literallycancer]

Hours of sunlight per year:

Vancouver - 1835

London - 1460

Tallinn - 1753

Amsterdam - 1568

Stockholm - 1973

San Francisco - 3037

Honestly it's not that bad.

This map[1] might be of interest.

1 - https://i.imgur.com/yIe8gWy.jpg

[heartbreak]

Some people enjoy rainy weather.

[justin66]

Well, the relevant comparison is to the San Francisco Bay Area...

[elliotec]

It's way way worse than the Bay Area. Have you been to Seattle? It's like that.

[adventured]

It's not even remotely close.

Vancouver: 160+ rainy days per year

San Francisco: ~50-60 would be typical (with 250+ sunny days per year). It had 66 rainy days last year for example. And just 42 in 2013.

[justin66]

I moved out to San Francisco during a historic El Nino season so I'm sure my perception is a little warped, but I'd note that you're providing a lot more detail about one than the other, and no citations. Not that any of this matters.

[acchow]

Ski in the morning and play beach volleyball in the afternoon? What month of the year? Whistler-blackcomb tops out at only 8000ft.

Vancouver gets 1900 hours of sunlight a year. That's not a lot. Compare to Seattle (which is considered gloomy) at 2170 hours and SF at 3000 hours.

[allendoerfer]

> Vancouver gets 1900 hours of sunlight a year. That's not a lot. Compare to Seattle (which is considered gloomy) at 2170 hours and SF at 3000 hours.

Are you talking about sunlight or sunshine? I think these are different. The city where I live gets apparently between 1500 and 1800 hours of sunshine, is a bit South of Vancouver (but in Europe) and not particularly known for not being sunny. So the amount of sunshine could actually increase for immigrants, not coming from California.

[cperciva]

Ski in the morning and play beach volleyball in the afternoon? What month of the year? Whistler-blackcomb tops out at only 8000ft.

March or April. We've had an exceptionally harsh winter this year (snow on the ground in Vancouver for weeks on end -- happens about once a decade) but usually around now people are admiring the cherry blossoms on their way to the beach.

Whistler/Blackcomb has a perfectly skiable alpine through to the end of April, and you can ski past that if you want (but I wouldn't personally recommend it).

[acchow]

Ok, but even in May average high in Vancouver is 16.7C, average low of 8.8C. That's hardly beach volleyball weather. I'm skeptical of the claim that people ski in the morning and play beach volleyball in the afternoon...maybe one or two lucky days a year?

These are exactly the temperatures tons of people in this thread are saying is cold when referring to San Francisco. They actually correspond with March in SF.

[adamiscool8]

When people arrive in Vancouver, we rewire their hypothalamus with wildly lower expectations for what constitutes "amazing weather".

[titanomachy]

People definitely play beach volleyball in Vancouver in May. Maybe they are just insane. But some days are much warmer than 17C, and when it's sunny the air temperature doesn't matter that much.

[mantas]

16c is almost tshirt weather in northern europe, which is about same latitude as Vancouver. This would pass as a colder summer day too. No rain = beach :)

Everybody's perspective is different...

[ZoeZoeBee]

60 Farenheit is not T-Shirt Weather, it certainly is not beach weather, that's cold for a high. As far as the latitude that's fairly irrelevant thanks to the Atlantic Drift, Great Britain is at the same latitude as Southern Alaska though their climate is quite different

[wbl]

The fact that SF buildings are poorly insulated doesn't help.

[exDM69]

This!

I visited SF for the first time in December and at first I didn't realize why people were complaining about the cold when it was rather nice weather outside (I'm from 60 degrees north) and the weather was in the 60-70 Farenheit range (20 celsius) which I consider to be nice and temperate climate.

But after a week it hit me. It's cold as hell indoors! I have warmer in my house now than I had in my hotel room or office and it's snow and ice outside.

[run4yourlives2]

Blackcomb is open until late may, and then also has a summer season. (glacier)

Vancouver does get a lot of concentrated rain, but summers are sunnier than most cities in North America. 90% of that 1900 hours is between June and September.

[NathanCH]

Sunshine hours has more to do with the fact that the sun sets here at 4:00pm in the winter. More often than not it's sunny or cloudy with sunny breaks.

[acchow]

I'm 95% sure that's not how the earth's orbit works.

Sure, further from the equator makes your days shorter in the winter, but they're longer during the summer. It's awash.

[swsieber]

It is a wash, but judging from the comments the heavy rains/gloom come in the winter... so it could be a real explaination.

[acchow]

Actually, just the opposite. If most of the cloud cover/gloomy weather happened in the winter, then much of the clouds would be at night...which wouldn't dramatically reduce your sunshine hours.

If the gloominess happened during long days, you'd really see a drop in mean sunshine hours.

[mc32]

If people are used to Seattle or Portland OR weather, they'll be used to Vancouver weather. I must say though, getting used to the Winter gloom takes some getting used to.

[NotSammyHagar]

yeah, don't come to seattle either, it's full of the walking dead. no room for more people. vancouver is much better. austin is the top.

[walterkobayashi]

that sounds alluring :)