[mjn]

Having grown up in the midwest, one of the main things keeping me from moving back (besides particularities of jobs/etc.) is the weather. Really really cold winters, hot & humid summers. Nice springs and autumns, though, if I could arrange to be somewhere else Dec-Feb and June-Aug. I'd pay a premium to live somewhere with a longer "nice to be outdoors" season, though how much of a premium is a good question.

I actually live in Scandinavia now, and the winters here are warm in comparison!

[colanderman]

To SomeCallMeTim: you useful comment shows up dead for me. Perhaps you have been unfairly hellbanned?

[doorhammer]

I moved from St. Louis to Atlanta and I kind of miss having a cold winter with snow (though Atlanta's gotten pretty frickin cold this winter)

Humidity sucks though, heh.

I actually really miss St. Louis

[nextos]

Oh, really? I'm living in Scandinavia and looking to move elsewhere. Midwest was one of my options, and I had never thought winters were so bad over there!

[gaoshan]

I've lived in Finland and spent time in Sweden in the winter and I grew up in Ohio (went to college in Michigan) and I can tell you that the winters in the midwest vary greatly depending on which part you live in. Finland and Sweden both had longer, colder, winters than Ohio does, for example. Chicago will get super cold and windy but the winters still aren't as long as in Scandinavia.

Basically, much of the midwest has shorter winters but some parts of it have equally harsh or even harsher (the Dakotas, for example) weather. Northern Michigan is quite a bit like Finland, for example, while the lower portion of Michigan is nothing at all like Finland.

Totally depends on where you go, even within the midwest.

[mjn]

Winters are shorter, but the temperatures drop much lower than in Denmark, anyway (perhaps not colder than Finland). Here are the nightly low temperatures in Chicago for the next 5 days: -17 C, -20 C, -25 C, -22 C, -13 C. I have never seen temperatures like that in Copenhagen!

Granted, in an average week Chicago won't be quite that cold, but in general its winter weather is pretty harsh. People bike to work all winter in Copenhagen, which would be unthinkable in Chicago weather (even if the city had better bike infrastructure). I actually like it being moderately cold and snowy, but -5 C is about my limit.

[doorhammer]

Good idea of what it looks like in St Louis:

http://weatherspark.com/averages/31697/St-Louis-Missouri-Uni...

Humidity was always the killer for me. I remember flying from San Diego to St. Louis. It was 75 degrees and dry in San Diego, and 102 degrees with 94% humidity in St. Louis. I wanted to die, heh

That said, I always liked the variety.

It means that I have pretty strong, nostalgic feelings associated with the seasons changing.

[fractalsea]

That site is a brilliant resource. Thanks for sharing.

One of my main considerations when moving somewhere is the climate.

It would be cool if the site had links to places with similar climates (could be calculated with some kind of distance metric from all the variables). I loved the climate in Sydney, so it would be nice to see a list of places in the world where it's similar.

[doorhammer]

No problem. That's actually the first time I've seen it as well, and it seems to have pretty much all the information I'd like about climate.

And yeah, I've never looked around for one, but being able to search for cities within similar bounds would be nice. Makes me wonder if there are national weather databases you could use to perform your own queries and get similar results.

[fractalsea]

I found this which seems good.

http://mikemcbrearty.com/climate/

One feature I would like would be the ability to filter results by continent (or even more fine grained filters).

[nextos]

Oh, variety is good. Weather here in Denmark is so plain and boring. The only remarkable season is May-July, thanks to the long days and relatively warm weather.

I totally agree humidity is horrible. I've stayed a few summers in The Hamptons, Long Island---and humidity was a killer. I cannot imagine coping with 102 F / 94%.

[doorhammer]

Yeah, 102 wasn't normal. It just stuck out most in my mind because it was pretty literally seared into my brain, and the contrast to cali didn't help :)

I cycled twenty or thirty miles a day pretty consistently and it never ceased to amaze me how quickly my shirt would become a sopping wet rag the second I stopped