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Goldilocks Zone Finder – Find your ideal climate

338 points by nemo1618 5y ago

om3n 5y ago
Even though it’s possible to deduce, I think it would still be helpful to indicate temperature units (C/F).
- unsupp0rted 5y ago
  I hit the "back" button when I saw it's only in F units, and I didn't feel like doing conversions.
  - krono 5y ago
    Your loss, it's pretty neat
    - shock 5y ago
      What's his loss, exactly?
      - krono 5y ago
        Not having experienced the joy of dreaming about a new life in another place. What an odd question! Edit: My ideal temperature range left me with just Vancouver, Canada.
        ghostpepper 5y ago
        Vancouverite here - the temperature is quite moderate but you need to be okay with a lot of grey drizzly days. Summers are wonderful though.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    When I travel outside the US and have to discuss temperatures with people, or I'm talking to foreigners in the US, I convert to C in my head and use that. It probably isn't that hard for you to just convert in your head.
    - odiroot 5y ago
      There's never a need to use anything else than Celsius, in Europe. Ok, we do learn Kelvin in school but you wouldn't really use it in a normal conversation.
      - jedberg 5y ago
        There's never a need to use anything else than Fahrenheit the US either, but I still learned how to use Celsius.
    - gpvos 5y ago
      No, it's not, because it's not just a multiplication but also an addition. If I would live in the US for some time maybe I would develop a knack for it, but for now it's too much effort for something that only a few places use.
      - jedberg 5y ago
        I don't use multiplication or division. I just know 0=32, 10=50, 20=68, 22=72(aka room temp), 30=86, and 40=104 (aka really hot). I just estimate from there.
        zargon 5y ago
        As a continental climate dweller I also know 0f = -18c, -20f = -30c, -40f = -40c.
- 4ndrewl 5y ago
  "Show me this was written by an American, without telling me it was written by an American" It's still pretty neat though. :)
  - electroly 5y ago
    The fact that it only shows America is, perhaps, the most obvious tell ;)
    - roter 5y ago
      Except for the isolated hex in Ontario, Canada. Note that this was probably built from the USCRN network [0] which has a research station in Egbert [1]. [0] https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/crn/ https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/crn/ [1] https://www.atdd.noaa.gov/u-s-crn-groups-map/ https://www.atdd.noaa.gov/u-s-crn-groups-map/
      - chestnuttrees 5y ago
        Dang. This is why it’s fun to read HN. Thanks!
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  Had to do a quick sanity check too. My ideal climate is definitely in a place where the temperature remains below the boiling point of water.
Nzen 5y ago
tl;dr This is a USA map to visualize average or min-max temperatures for areas roughly the diameter of Chicago. It colors the tiles based on the proportion of the selected interval (annual or a specific month). The data is from a US agency [0]. This way, you can see that Los Angeles, CA is 40-80° F 75% of the year and Salt Lake City, UT is in that range only 10%. [0] https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-climate-normalsi https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-cli...
- zaphod4prez 5y ago
  Typo in the link. Corrected link: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-climate-normals https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-cli... (Great link btw, thanks for sharing!)
silisili 5y ago
I like data like this - it reminds me of the pleasant places maps[1]. That said - you have to be wary of both types of maps because it doesn't take into account other potentially annoying factors. The biggest being humidity - there's a huge difference between 90 degree phoenix and 90 degree miami. Then there's rainfall, and one a lot of people don't think about - wind. To add - if you're thinking about seriously comparing two climates, check out this comparison tool [2]. Has any metric you can dream of charted together. 1 - https://kellegous.com/j/2014/02/03/pleasant-places/ https://kellegous.com/j/2014/02/03/pleasant-places/ 2 - https://outflux.net/weather/noaa/index.php https://outflux.net/weather/noaa/index.php
- brimble 5y ago
  Yeah this paints most of the Southwest as having a worse climate than where I live, which... yeah, for anyone who hates humidity (which is most people, I think?), that's not remotely true. I'd take 95F and bone dry over 82F and soaking-wet air, any day. Happily.
  - silisili 5y ago
    Same. I'm moving from FL to the SW this year. People see our summer weather - 88hi, 78 low almost every day and think it's perfect. It's not, and it feels gross down to about 72 degrees because of the suffocating humidity.
    - folkrav 5y ago
      I thought we had humid air in Montreal, literally living on an island, and to some extent it's true, but when I went down to Florida did I understand what humidity can make you feel like. Was there mid-August, some days were brutal.
  - antupis 5y ago
    Same with cold I would take dry non windy -10F over humid windy 30F any day.
wk_end 5y ago
200-366 days at the top end is an enormous range (substantially larger than all the others, for some reason) - nearly half the year. I hate hot weather, and this didn't really help me filter out places that have horrible summers, because the summer is, yes, less than 166 days long. I assume people who dislike cold weather would feel similarly. So this is...kind of useless?
- nemo1618 5y ago
  Good call! I hate hot weather too. I'll try breaking up the range a bit more. btw, you can also view on a month-by-month basis.
  - wk_end 5y ago
    I totally missed the month-by-month drop down. That helps, a lot, thanks. Sorry for the overly critical tone of my comment, BTW. Sometimes the internet makes it hard for me to remember that real people work on stuff and are reading what you're saying about it.
octoberfranklin 5y ago
If anybody knows how to search the USA (or elsewhere) for the place with the highest [*] mixing height, I will give you all of my internet points and sing your praises for the rest of eternity. Here is what the mixing height looks like for a random spot in Washington State: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w3u=1&w13=mhgt&w13u=0&w16u=1&AheadHour=0&Submit=Submit&FcstType=graphical&textField1=46.3578&textField2=-119.0881&site=all&unit=0&dd=&bw= https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w3u=1&w13=mhgt&w13... NOAA doesn't seem to publish any data on actual mixing height, and even these forecasted mixing heights are only available for some areas (I can't find them for anyplace in Northern California, for example). I am extremely sensitive to air pollution and this is, by far, the number one factor that correlates with my well-being. You'd think that coastal areas mean "clean ocean air", but they also tend to have very low mixing heights (Los Angeles is an extreme example) so when the wind isn't blowing in from the ocean it's pretty bad. Desert areas have spectacularly high mixing heights during the day, but near zero at night. [*] Technically I'm trying to optimize for the highest height of the lowest Nth percentile (for something like N=5%).
com2kid 5y ago
And this is why SF is so popular. It is a shame Florida never developed a huge tech hub, but Miami has plenty of other stuff going for it. (besides hurricanes) People don't get it, SF will be always popular because the climate is just that good. Seattle is a close #2 IMHO, but you have to be able to put up with 8 months of grey, which is a huge "but".
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Redwood City: Climate Best by Government Test
  - Xcelerate 5y ago
    I lived in Redwood City for a few years. It was fantastic. We moved there from Tennessee, and after the first week we were like “wow, it has been clear blue skies every day this week!” After another four months with barely a cloud in the sky, it dawned on us that the climate really was quite incredible (although there are two seasons, “green” and “brown”, and the months are swapped from what they are in the southeast). 30 miles north in San Francisco it’s quite a bit cooler and less sunny though. I would drive into the fog every Saturday morning to visit the farmers market. We’re back in Tennessee now and I forgot how bad my seasonal affective disorder gets. Apparently I crave sunshine.
    - tigen 5y ago
      What I find is that a total lack of clouds can make the sunlight feel overly bright and intense. The dryness can also lead to a bit of dust in the air. This is pretty minor nitpicking overall, but the middle of the day can feel a little harsh for these reasons. The landscapes also get dried out. This is more noticeable in the south bay than SF and thereabouts
      - dehrmann 5y ago
        > This is more noticeable in the south bay than SF and thereabouts That's probably why Redwood City wins. In the summer, if you take 101 from the Presido to Gilroy, there's a spectrum from cool, damp, and foggy to hot and dry. The happy median is between Millbrae and Santa Clara, but you have a dial you can use to pick anything in that range.
f0e4c2f7 5y ago
Another site you can use for this sort of thing is nomadlist[0]. Maybe get a general idea from this site and then use nomadlist to narrow it down to a city. [0] nomadlist.com
odiroot 5y ago
I pretty much only get southern California and southern Florida with my ideal range. I wish this website supported Europe and Asia.
- mettamage 5y ago
  Haha, we are alike! I have exactly the same :)
renewiltord 5y ago
Hawaii. Gorgeous place. Loved living there. People don’t like working that much, though. Missed the buzz of the Bay Area.
rosetremiere 5y ago
I must say, it's frustrating clicking this link and landing on a page narrowed to the USA, and, to top it off, in Fahrenheit… Maybe a title change would be welcome.
- nemo1618 5y ago
  Sorry! I'd love to extend this to other countries, but I wasn't sure where to get the data.
  - rosetremiere 5y ago
    My turn to be sorry! I had to blow some steam off and hadn't thought about the fact that the person behind the page might read my comment. Cheers on your work :)
  - tony_cannistra 5y ago
    The ECMWF Reanalysis is a great option! https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/dataset/ecmwf-reanalysis-v5 https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/dataset/ecmwf-reanalysis-...
  - loloquwowndueo 5y ago
    Temp in Celsius doesn’t need getting any extra data :)
    - daotoad 5y ago
      Fortunately the insanity of "standard" units has everyone used to memorizing silly facts like boiling is 212 and there are 5280 feet in a mile. If you're used to that, it's easy to remember that C = (F-32) * 9 / 5.
      - airstrike 5y ago
        Uuuhhh, no? More like freezing is 0C and there are 1,000 meters in a kilometer
      - 5y ago
Synaesthesia 5y ago
Living in Pretoria I thought we had an ideal climate. It gets a bit chilly in winter but it's mostly quite a moderate and dry climate. Then my friend told me about the Kenyan Highlands, which he thinks has the best climate. It's basically 23C year round!
triumphantomato 5y ago
Is it possible to limit the search to daytime temperatures? I care much more if it's 40*F during the day than during the night.
- nemo1618 5y ago
  Not sure if NOAA provides a dataset for that, but I totally agree!
mmckelvy 5y ago
I've found Weather Spark to be a useful tool for researching ideal climates: https://weatherspark.com/ https://weatherspark.com/. It has detailed temperature breakouts by time of day and year, wind speed, humidity, rainfall, etc. One thing I've started to pay a lot more attention to is rainfall. The temperature in Southern California (where I currently live) is certainly pleasant, but that comes with the tradeoff of very limited rainfall, which seems to be having an increasingly negative impact as the years wear on.
- dartdartdart 5y ago
  Currently SF is in a more severe drought than LA Src: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...
laweijfmvo 5y ago
Very useful! Thanks! If you could somehow incorporate sunshine (examples: # sunny days, daily hours of sun, % cloud cover, or something similar), that would be a phenomenal addition.
nemo1618 5y ago
Hi all! Some background on the project: I want to build a house someday, and the first step is deciding where to build. I knew an interactive map like this would be useful, but after fiddling with leaflet.js for a while and googling for climate data, I felt a bit lost. So I decided to try something new: I hired a contractor on Upwork who had experience with map visualizations. They built an MVP within a few weeks, and from there I was able to tweak and optimize the code to my liking. I think this is a great strategy for side projects that you're too busy for. :) It's still mostly a toy at this point, but I'd like to add more knobs and data so that I can narrow down the best place to live (and hopefully help other people do the same). If you want to contribute, the code is open source: https://github.com/lukechampine/goldilocks https://github.com/lukechampine/goldilocks The site weighs about 1.6 MB (gzipped -- the full climate data is ~35 MB uncompressed!) and is hosted on a Linode, which seems to be holding up pretty well. Also, a big thank you to those in the comments who shared links to similar projects! The "pleasant places" map is super close to what I want. Ideally this project would look something like that, but with the ability to select your own preferences for what constitutes a "perfect" day.
- mempko 5y ago
  Really cool. Does this have a climate change model? Without one this is useful for maybe a 5 to 10yr window.
- gotaquestion 5y ago
  Great job! Very responsive. I thought about making something like this too, years ago. I wanted to converge data from tornados, fault lines, flooding, and hurricaine probabilities. But then I got sucked into EVERY parameter I might want to consider, like air traffic (vortac lines), distance to power grid, UPS coverage, internet coverage, cellular coverage... and eventually the amount of data crushed my brain and the project never even made it to a NextJS boilerplate. :) So if you want to add more data... hint hint hint. :) How did you "bend" those hexagons? What's going on there as I go from coast to coast? Is that to map them to a sphere?
  - nemo1618 5y ago
spuz 5y ago
I must be using the tool wrong because literally everywhere in the US is my Goldilocks zone which I'm certain is not the case. I set it to give me places where the minimum winter temperature is -5°C (23F) and max summer temperature is 35°C (95F) and every part of the map is coloured purple.
- nemo1618 5y ago
  You are very tolerant, haha. I can't stand anything over 80F or so. btw, you can also view individual months if you only care about a particular season.
  - spuz 5y ago
    I think I just don't understand what to input to give the answer I want. I entered the typical minimum and maximum temperatures that I experience where I live now which is London, UK. Given that, I wouldn't expect the tool to tell me that the entire US has the same climate as London. I think it's because I'm used to a place where the extremes only last for a few days in each year and the rest of the time the temperature is pretty mild. Tolerating a 35°C day in the summer is not that hard when it only happens once every 5 years and you can go and drink cold drinks in the park. I think it would be interesting to see the same map of the US but showing areas that never reach above or below the limits that you set.
    - bee_rider 5y ago
      You could probably pick a summer month in the month drop-down, at least for a pretty good approximation of 'areas that never go over X temperature,' since purple indicates 25-31 days inside your range. This told me that I should live in Alaska, or on Mt. Washington. Unfortunately my ancestors came from your cloudy islands and we never adapted to all this horrible sunlight I guess.
- mrep 5y ago
  Lol, as someone from Chicago, I thought the same. Then again, I like seasons so it doesn't seem that useful.
kevinsundar 5y ago
And this my friends is why I live in San Diego! I really do think tech will take off in this area soon. Its (relatively for CA) on the cheaper side for housing and great for remote work.
- romanhn 5y ago
  While still somewhat cheaper than prime Bay Area real estate in absolute sense, the price edge in San Diego and North County has rapidly diminished in the last couple of years. Bidding is extremely aggressive and many homes in the more desirable areas go pending within a few days, frequently with many offers multiple $100k's above asking price. Saw one go $1M above asking recently. It's pretty bonkers.
- dartdartdart 5y ago
  Why is it great for remote work? The land is already developed and the undeveloped areas get the sweltering sun of socal without the cooling ocean breeze to balance it out. The "good climate" only lasts for a mile or so from shore from
not2b 5y ago
A site like this should use the heat index or the wet bulb temperature. The reason is that 35 °C (95 °F) is fatal to humans within hours at 100% relative humidity, but relatively comfortable at 10% humidity for people who are drinking enough water and have sun protection.
photochemsyn 5y ago
Such zones won't necessarily be very stable. Current climate trends point towards an increase in hot humid conditions in some areas, increased aridity and drought in others, and associated extreme weather conditions. If there's any one culprit to point to, it's the water vapor increase (forced in turn by the increase in atmospheric fossil CO2 and CH4). This also affects wet-bulb temperature (which sets an upper limit on outdoor activity): https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-handle-how-climate-change-may-make-some-places-too-hot-to-live/ https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-ha... Climate-resistant design and construction is going to be a booming field in years to come. Termite-type underground construction, fire-resistant bunkers in dry zones, maybe flood-resistant floatable housing in flood zones, solar-powered AC units, etc. A lot of climates are more tolerable if you have a refuge to escape to.
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  they will be stable enough for your life time
smeej 5y ago
Reading the comments makes me wonder if I'm the only one who would even be interested in this, but I really like variety, so I'd love to be able to be able to layer semitranslucent layers on top of each other. It's probably way too much customization, but if I want somewhere that has at least 30 days that don't get over 30 degrees, as well as maybe 15 days above 90 degrees, I'd kind of have to have it open in two windows and compare locations myself, as opposed to being able to set which end of the color spectrum would be my "green" for each filter, layer them on top of each other, and just look for the greenest places. But it seems like most people have a preference for consistent weather, so you're probably nailing your target market's wishes! I already know I love where I live, too, so it'd be fun to look at where else might suit me, but I'm not making plans to move based on a hope of weather improvement.
- kevmo314 5y ago
  I also like variety. I would've liked to see how closely the temperature distribution in a cell matches a normal distribution parameterized by the slider instead of how many days fall in that bucket. That would reward closer matches over places that just maintain one temperature.
- alecbz 5y ago
  Yeah, big +1 on seasons and variety. I grew up on the east coast so I guess I'm just kind acclimated to it, but I never got being so obsessed with the weather. Like when I go outside and it's freezing, am I like "yay"? No. But there is a coziness to the winter I appreciate, getting to go inside and warm up. And then warmer weather starts to come, and you feel relieved by it, you get to actually be like "yay, Spring is here!", instead of just getting acclimated to it being spring all the time. You get to cycle through different fashion styles too (which until a few years ago I wouldn't have really thought about, but have started to care about more recently). I think happiness is more about deltas than steady state, and so I think it is actually nicer to get to experience the variety. But even ignoring all of that, the fact that weather is so important to someone that they consider moving over it just feels so alien to me.
  - chockchocschoir 5y ago
upnick 5y ago
Any chance this can be made to work in countries besides the United States? The weather over here in Malaysia has been going insane - imagine 2 months worth in rain happening in 2 days.
at_a_remove 5y ago
In the lightning-unlikely chance that I had my druthers, I would go for something like a Koppen Cfb climate, probably near the Hoh rainforest: moderate temperatures, highly overcast, and quite damp. But not near a great number of people.
svilen_dobrev 5y ago
i have found some places that i like as climate... tried living there for some time.. but disliked the people. And moved away. so there are even less places that i feel compatible with, if measuring climate AND people .. anyway, YMMMV.
jakear 5y ago
Those finding fault in this may be better served by the B6ppen climate classification, which is a global index that takes into account not just temperature but also rainfall and whether the rain is strongest in summer or winter. Notably, it shows that the idyllic Mediterranean/Californian climate can also be found in parts of Western Australia, South Africa, and Chile. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classifica...
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Cape Town South Africa, Coastal Southern California/Mexico, and Pacific Northwest Jun to Sep are as good as it gets in my opinion. Nairobi is up there too, but I have not spent enough time there to know about year round.
  - liversage 5y ago
    Medellín in Colombia sometimes described as the city of eternal spring is known for its perfect climate. In addition it's a very vibrant city.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Have not been there, but I look forward to visiting!
    - smcl 5y ago
      Ha I didn't know it had a special name, I found out about Medellin's climate when I was looking for a place which had the consistency of Singapore's climate but about 5C cooler. I found that Addis Ababa and Kigali are pretty similar, and though it's a couple of degrees cooler Quito's climate seems quite appealing too. I've been to none of these cities so I've no idea what they're like to visit or live in, but when I'm walking my dog in the morning and it's -1C on the 12th of March my mind wanders :-)
      - jakear 5y ago
carry_bit 5y ago
-10F isn't that cold. Maybe extend the bottom of the range (or provide a number input) for those of us who like the cold?
- nemo1618 5y ago
  I emphatically disagree, but I did notice that the full range of temperatures in the NOAA dataset is -30 to 120. I've updated the site to use that range.
Floegipoky 5y ago
Haven't seen USDA plant hardiness zones mentioned. Definitely less detailed but still very useful: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/pages/view-maps https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/pages/view-maps
- ianbicking 5y ago
  Plant zones seem very primitive to me, AFAICT based only on the maximum sustained cold. So for instance Duluth has a relatively higher hardiness zone rating than some areas around it, despite having a very narrow growing period, simply because in the depth of winter it doesn't get QUITE as cold due to Lake Superior. But most of the year it's quite a bit colder places around it due to that same lake!
disillusioned 5y ago
Do you really need a tool to just tell you "San Diego"? (I'm kidding, this is really neat.)
freedomben 5y ago
I've become a little obsessed with the history of the US in the 19th century, and this map does an amazing job at helping visualize the seriousness and difficulty that frontier livers and westward migrators faced back then. It's also just damn interesting as an interactive climate map!
OrlandoHakim 5y ago
This is an awesome visualization. A couple feature requests that would improve this - have an option to show the reverse of Min/Max days. i.e. Show me places where the temperature is below an extreme for a minimum number of days. - better accessibility, this color scheme doesn’t work for the color blind - what about wet vs dry days? i.e. Precipitation
mLuby 5y ago
Feature request: bugs! Don't know what kind of data sources there are for this but voracious insects can make an otherwise lovely climate unbearable.
- zargon 5y ago
  Another reason multiple temperature ranges are needed. Winter is lovely for variety and especially for killing the bugs. But too much winter can get tedious.
therealmarv 5y ago
Countries which use Fahrenheit: the United States, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Liberia, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. Please add a Celsius switch! Thanks from the rest of the World.
- paxys 5y ago
  Countries whose temperate data this site has: United States
paxys 5y ago
One thing that isn't very intuitive – on a map dealing with temperature you'd immediately expect a range of red to blue colors to represent hotter/colder regions. In this case, maybe a different color scheme would help in representing # days more clearly.
Animats 5y ago
Coastal LA - the only place in the US with a liveable climate that doesn't have hurricanes.
- mrep 5y ago
  Define "livable climate". Are Seasons too much to handle? Also, aren't you at risk for an insane 9.0 earthquake (was so when I live in Seattle I believe).
paxys 5y ago
San Diego is already now the more unaffordable city in the country. We don't need this.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fortysixdegrees 5y ago
I did a more comprehensive version of this analysis many years ago, and ended up moving to Guanajuato, Guanajuato Mexico as a result. And the climate was... Perfect.
kfrzcode 5y ago
> Fahrenheit
httpz 5y ago
I'd say the California weather tax is really worth it (for me). Climate plays a huge role in quality of life but it rarely comes up when people are comparing the next "tech hub" to move to.
almog 5y ago
I love it. Some more dimensions that would be nice to have: precipitation and unfortunately, air pollution index, especially in the west during summer.
airstrike 5y ago
There should be two sliders, for Fahrenheit and Celsius and dragging one would drag the other as well too... At a minimum, cycling through the 2 standards should be idempotent (or at least I think that's what it's called...)
blunte 5y ago
Ahh US only. Well, Puerto Rico it is then!
Brajeshwar 5y ago
I believe you are going to add more. Here are a few things I learnt after listening to a wealthy person looking for a place in India to build massive research, retreat kinda home, for his family, and the people who pop in to live their work. The temperature range is one of the many factors. Even in a hotter area (from statistics), you can create a pleasant environment around the year if you have enough space and strategically plant trees and other greens, without any artificial air conditioning. Soil: Look for soil quality and their changes over time and thus the likelihood of future quality. Water: This is one of the most important ones. I believe you want to live/retire in the outskirts, grow your food, etc. Water plays a crucial role in what you want to do and what life you will have. Calamities: History of natural calamities. The others will be crime rates, political unrests, and accessibility, depending on how far you want to stay away from the crowd. Nonetheless, your app is super cool and has given me ideas. Start with all the software possible and commission a small research team to pinpoint a few locations and zero in your final choices. ;-)
dzhiurgis 5y ago
I’m still looking for a place like Auckland (cuz property market) - 23 celcius for around 6 months, decent humidity. Azores seemed similar, but most maps forget humidity which makes it tad too warm.
ComputerGuru 5y ago
This is absolutely amazing but can I beg you to include an option to filter by dew point? I don’t care about hot but I cannot handle humidity!
- muzani 5y ago
  Having stayed in Australia and the Middle East for a while, high temperatures like 40 C are very livable when it's dry. While 32 C can be terrible indoors where it's humid. My home/office is loaded with dehumidifiers.
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    The corollary to that: I'm from the Midwest where 40° F is t-shirt weather, but 80° in the Nevada desert doesn't feel much warmer than that.
- blogush 5y ago
  100% me too.
sytelus 5y ago
I wonder if it was possible to create geospatial database of temperature, humidity, sunshine times, population density, air quality etc and then do queries to find regions of interest.
- davidandgoliath 5y ago
  Specifically, relative humidity. :)
astrange 5y ago
I remember there was a site called "Teleport" for planning where to move to (climate, noise, good neighborhoods, etc) that I used last time I moved around in the Bay, but it got acquihired and shut down. Hopefully someone makes another one.
pharmakom 5y ago
This suggested the PNW to me, but doesn’t it rain there a lot? I think days of rain might be even more important than temperature to me.
foxhop 5y ago
u r a genius, u should share this with Oregon State University Permaculture department & say Russell sent u.
sokoloff 5y ago
Very nice and, like other commenters, I really like the responsiveness. Small bit: on an iPhone XS Max, the slider couldn’t be set to 20°F or 85°F. Making the control box slightly wider would probably allow that, but it took nothing away from the practical usability, of course.
cehrlich 5y ago
Fantastic project! I have no idea how feasible this is given the available data, but would be great to see it expanded to other continents. Also apparently the ideal place for me to live in America would be in a national park/forest. Time to change careers I guess.
danpalmer 5y ago
"Find your ideal climate" As long as it's in the US.
verisimi 5y ago
"Your ideal climate is Kiev!"
Decabytes 5y ago
Since my job allows me to work remotely, I based a large part of my decision to move by states that were in grow zone 6 and above in the US. I have a pretty good idea of where all those places are now. Surprisingly depending on where you are in the States, moving down one state south doesn’t change the weather appreciably
politician 5y ago
Awesome! Would you consider adding humidity, days of sunshine, and something like number of natural disasters?
irrational 5y ago
What about humidity? The colors make San Diego and Houston look similar, but one is much more humid than the other.
electrondood 5y ago
Ah. So that's why California real estate is so expensive. I was wishing there was something like this, that also took population demographics like age, gender balance, education level into consideration.
martininmelb 5y ago
I love the map. I love the responsiveness. I have done things with Leaflet and geoJSON and have always wanted to do hexagons. How did you convert the temperature data to hexagons? Or, more specifically, create the tesselation of hexagons? (I would like to do something similar for Australia where I live)
pyuser583 5y ago
Thank you! This is very useful!
ajbatac 5y ago
This is awesome! Great work.
blogush 5y ago
can you please add Humidity (RH) as well please?

338 points by nemo1618 5y ago

om3n 5y ago

Even though it’s possible to deduce, I think it would still be helpful to indicate temperature units (C/F).

unsupp0rted 5y ago
I hit the "back" button when I saw it's only in F units, and I didn't feel like doing conversions.
- krono 5y ago
  Your loss, it's pretty neat
  - shock 5y ago
    What's his loss, exactly?
    - krono 5y ago
      Not having experienced the joy of dreaming about a new life in another place. What an odd question! Edit: My ideal temperature range left me with just Vancouver, Canada.
      - ghostpepper 5y ago
        Vancouverite here - the temperature is quite moderate but you need to be okay with a lot of grey drizzly days. Summers are wonderful though.
- jedberg 5y ago
  When I travel outside the US and have to discuss temperatures with people, or I'm talking to foreigners in the US, I convert to C in my head and use that. It probably isn't that hard for you to just convert in your head.
  - odiroot 5y ago
    There's never a need to use anything else than Celsius, in Europe. Ok, we do learn Kelvin in school but you wouldn't really use it in a normal conversation.
    - jedberg 5y ago
      There's never a need to use anything else than Fahrenheit the US either, but I still learned how to use Celsius.
  - gpvos 5y ago
    No, it's not, because it's not just a multiplication but also an addition. If I would live in the US for some time maybe I would develop a knack for it, but for now it's too much effort for something that only a few places use.
    - jedberg 5y ago
      I don't use multiplication or division. I just know 0=32, 10=50, 20=68, 22=72(aka room temp), 30=86, and 40=104 (aka really hot). I just estimate from there.
      - zargon 5y ago
        As a continental climate dweller I also know 0f = -18c, -20f = -30c, -40f = -40c.
4ndrewl 5y ago
"Show me this was written by an American, without telling me it was written by an American" It's still pretty neat though. :)
- electroly 5y ago
  The fact that it only shows America is, perhaps, the most obvious tell ;)
  - roter 5y ago
    Except for the isolated hex in Ontario, Canada. Note that this was probably built from the USCRN network [0] which has a research station in Egbert [1]. [0] https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/crn/ https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/crn/ [1] https://www.atdd.noaa.gov/u-s-crn-groups-map/ https://www.atdd.noaa.gov/u-s-crn-groups-map/
    - chestnuttrees 5y ago
      Dang. This is why it’s fun to read HN. Thanks!
dr_orpheus 5y ago
Had to do a quick sanity check too. My ideal climate is definitely in a place where the temperature remains below the boiling point of water.

Nzen 5y ago

tl;dr This is a USA map to visualize average or min-max temperatures for areas roughly the diameter of Chicago. It colors the tiles based on the proportion of the selected interval (annual or a specific month). The data is from a US agency [0]. This way, you can see that Los Angeles, CA is 40-80° F 75% of the year and Salt Lake City, UT is in that range only 10%. [0] https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-climate-normalsi https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-cli...

zaphod4prez 5y ago
Typo in the link. Corrected link: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-climate-normals https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/us-cli... (Great link btw, thanks for sharing!)

silisili 5y ago

I like data like this - it reminds me of the pleasant places maps[1]. That said - you have to be wary of both types of maps because it doesn't take into account other potentially annoying factors. The biggest being humidity - there's a huge difference between 90 degree phoenix and 90 degree miami. Then there's rainfall, and one a lot of people don't think about - wind. To add - if you're thinking about seriously comparing two climates, check out this comparison tool [2]. Has any metric you can dream of charted together. 1 - https://kellegous.com/j/2014/02/03/pleasant-places/ https://kellegous.com/j/2014/02/03/pleasant-places/ 2 - https://outflux.net/weather/noaa/index.php https://outflux.net/weather/noaa/index.php

brimble 5y ago
Yeah this paints most of the Southwest as having a worse climate than where I live, which... yeah, for anyone who hates humidity (which is most people, I think?), that's not remotely true. I'd take 95F and bone dry over 82F and soaking-wet air, any day. Happily.
- silisili 5y ago
  Same. I'm moving from FL to the SW this year. People see our summer weather - 88hi, 78 low almost every day and think it's perfect. It's not, and it feels gross down to about 72 degrees because of the suffocating humidity.
  - folkrav 5y ago
    I thought we had humid air in Montreal, literally living on an island, and to some extent it's true, but when I went down to Florida did I understand what humidity can make you feel like. Was there mid-August, some days were brutal.
- antupis 5y ago
  Same with cold I would take dry non windy -10F over humid windy 30F any day.

wk_end 5y ago

200-366 days at the top end is an enormous range (substantially larger than all the others, for some reason) - nearly half the year. I hate hot weather, and this didn't really help me filter out places that have horrible summers, because the summer is, yes, less than 166 days long. I assume people who dislike cold weather would feel similarly. So this is...kind of useless?

nemo1618 5y ago
Good call! I hate hot weather too. I'll try breaking up the range a bit more. btw, you can also view on a month-by-month basis.
- wk_end 5y ago
  I totally missed the month-by-month drop down. That helps, a lot, thanks. Sorry for the overly critical tone of my comment, BTW. Sometimes the internet makes it hard for me to remember that real people work on stuff and are reading what you're saying about it.

octoberfranklin 5y ago

If anybody knows how to search the USA (or elsewhere) for the place with the highest [*] mixing height, I will give you all of my internet points and sing your praises for the rest of eternity. Here is what the mixing height looks like for a random spot in Washington State: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w3u=1&w13=mhgt&w13u=0&w16u=1&AheadHour=0&Submit=Submit&FcstType=graphical&textField1=46.3578&textField2=-119.0881&site=all&unit=0&dd=&bw= https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w3u=1&w13=mhgt&w13... NOAA doesn't seem to publish any data on actual mixing height, and even these forecasted mixing heights are only available for some areas (I can't find them for anyplace in Northern California, for example). I am extremely sensitive to air pollution and this is, by far, the number one factor that correlates with my well-being. You'd think that coastal areas mean "clean ocean air", but they also tend to have very low mixing heights (Los Angeles is an extreme example) so when the wind isn't blowing in from the ocean it's pretty bad. Desert areas have spectacularly high mixing heights during the day, but near zero at night. [*] Technically I'm trying to optimize for the highest height of the lowest Nth percentile (for something like N=5%).

com2kid 5y ago

And this is why SF is so popular. It is a shame Florida never developed a huge tech hub, but Miami has plenty of other stuff going for it. (besides hurricanes) People don't get it, SF will be always popular because the climate is just that good. Seattle is a close #2 IMHO, but you have to be able to put up with 8 months of grey, which is a huge "but".

dehrmann 5y ago
Redwood City: Climate Best by Government Test
- Xcelerate 5y ago
  I lived in Redwood City for a few years. It was fantastic. We moved there from Tennessee, and after the first week we were like “wow, it has been clear blue skies every day this week!” After another four months with barely a cloud in the sky, it dawned on us that the climate really was quite incredible (although there are two seasons, “green” and “brown”, and the months are swapped from what they are in the southeast). 30 miles north in San Francisco it’s quite a bit cooler and less sunny though. I would drive into the fog every Saturday morning to visit the farmers market. We’re back in Tennessee now and I forgot how bad my seasonal affective disorder gets. Apparently I crave sunshine.
  - tigen 5y ago
    What I find is that a total lack of clouds can make the sunlight feel overly bright and intense. The dryness can also lead to a bit of dust in the air. This is pretty minor nitpicking overall, but the middle of the day can feel a little harsh for these reasons. The landscapes also get dried out. This is more noticeable in the south bay than SF and thereabouts
    - dehrmann 5y ago
      > This is more noticeable in the south bay than SF and thereabouts That's probably why Redwood City wins. In the summer, if you take 101 from the Presido to Gilroy, there's a spectrum from cool, damp, and foggy to hot and dry. The happy median is between Millbrae and Santa Clara, but you have a dial you can use to pick anything in that range.

f0e4c2f7 5y ago

Another site you can use for this sort of thing is nomadlist[0]. Maybe get a general idea from this site and then use nomadlist to narrow it down to a city. [0] nomadlist.com

odiroot 5y ago

I pretty much only get southern California and southern Florida with my ideal range. I wish this website supported Europe and Asia.

mettamage 5y ago
Haha, we are alike! I have exactly the same :)

renewiltord 5y ago

Hawaii. Gorgeous place. Loved living there. People don’t like working that much, though. Missed the buzz of the Bay Area.

rosetremiere 5y ago

I must say, it's frustrating clicking this link and landing on a page narrowed to the USA, and, to top it off, in Fahrenheit… Maybe a title change would be welcome.

nemo1618 5y ago
Sorry! I'd love to extend this to other countries, but I wasn't sure where to get the data.
- rosetremiere 5y ago
  My turn to be sorry! I had to blow some steam off and hadn't thought about the fact that the person behind the page might read my comment. Cheers on your work :)
- tony_cannistra 5y ago
  The ECMWF Reanalysis is a great option! https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/dataset/ecmwf-reanalysis-v5 https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/dataset/ecmwf-reanalysis-...
- loloquwowndueo 5y ago
  Temp in Celsius doesn’t need getting any extra data :)
  - daotoad 5y ago
    Fortunately the insanity of "standard" units has everyone used to memorizing silly facts like boiling is 212 and there are 5280 feet in a mile. If you're used to that, it's easy to remember that C = (F-32) * 9 / 5.
    - airstrike 5y ago
      Uuuhhh, no? More like freezing is 0C and there are 1,000 meters in a kilometer
    - 5y ago

Synaesthesia 5y ago

Living in Pretoria I thought we had an ideal climate. It gets a bit chilly in winter but it's mostly quite a moderate and dry climate. Then my friend told me about the Kenyan Highlands, which he thinks has the best climate. It's basically 23C year round!

triumphantomato 5y ago

Is it possible to limit the search to daytime temperatures? I care much more if it's 40*F during the day than during the night.

nemo1618 5y ago
Not sure if NOAA provides a dataset for that, but I totally agree!

mmckelvy 5y ago

I've found Weather Spark to be a useful tool for researching ideal climates: https://weatherspark.com/ https://weatherspark.com/. It has detailed temperature breakouts by time of day and year, wind speed, humidity, rainfall, etc. One thing I've started to pay a lot more attention to is rainfall. The temperature in Southern California (where I currently live) is certainly pleasant, but that comes with the tradeoff of very limited rainfall, which seems to be having an increasingly negative impact as the years wear on.

dartdartdart 5y ago
Currently SF is in a more severe drought than LA Src: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...

laweijfmvo 5y ago

Very useful! Thanks! If you could somehow incorporate sunshine (examples: # sunny days, daily hours of sun, % cloud cover, or something similar), that would be a phenomenal addition.

nemo1618 5y ago

Hi all! Some background on the project: I want to build a house someday, and the first step is deciding where to build. I knew an interactive map like this would be useful, but after fiddling with leaflet.js for a while and googling for climate data, I felt a bit lost. So I decided to try something new: I hired a contractor on Upwork who had experience with map visualizations. They built an MVP within a few weeks, and from there I was able to tweak and optimize the code to my liking. I think this is a great strategy for side projects that you're too busy for. :) It's still mostly a toy at this point, but I'd like to add more knobs and data so that I can narrow down the best place to live (and hopefully help other people do the same). If you want to contribute, the code is open source: https://github.com/lukechampine/goldilocks https://github.com/lukechampine/goldilocks The site weighs about 1.6 MB (gzipped -- the full climate data is ~35 MB uncompressed!) and is hosted on a Linode, which seems to be holding up pretty well. Also, a big thank you to those in the comments who shared links to similar projects! The "pleasant places" map is super close to what I want. Ideally this project would look something like that, but with the ability to select your own preferences for what constitutes a "perfect" day.

mempko 5y ago
Really cool. Does this have a climate change model? Without one this is useful for maybe a 5 to 10yr window.
gotaquestion 5y ago
Great job! Very responsive. I thought about making something like this too, years ago. I wanted to converge data from tornados, fault lines, flooding, and hurricaine probabilities. But then I got sucked into EVERY parameter I might want to consider, like air traffic (vortac lines), distance to power grid, UPS coverage, internet coverage, cellular coverage... and eventually the amount of data crushed my brain and the project never even made it to a NextJS boilerplate. :) So if you want to add more data... hint hint hint. :) How did you "bend" those hexagons? What's going on there as I go from coast to coast? Is that to map them to a sphere?
- nemo1618 5y ago

spuz 5y ago

I must be using the tool wrong because literally everywhere in the US is my Goldilocks zone which I'm certain is not the case. I set it to give me places where the minimum winter temperature is -5°C (23F) and max summer temperature is 35°C (95F) and every part of the map is coloured purple.

nemo1618 5y ago
You are very tolerant, haha. I can't stand anything over 80F or so. btw, you can also view individual months if you only care about a particular season.
- spuz 5y ago
  I think I just don't understand what to input to give the answer I want. I entered the typical minimum and maximum temperatures that I experience where I live now which is London, UK. Given that, I wouldn't expect the tool to tell me that the entire US has the same climate as London. I think it's because I'm used to a place where the extremes only last for a few days in each year and the rest of the time the temperature is pretty mild. Tolerating a 35°C day in the summer is not that hard when it only happens once every 5 years and you can go and drink cold drinks in the park. I think it would be interesting to see the same map of the US but showing areas that never reach above or below the limits that you set.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    You could probably pick a summer month in the month drop-down, at least for a pretty good approximation of 'areas that never go over X temperature,' since purple indicates 25-31 days inside your range. This told me that I should live in Alaska, or on Mt. Washington. Unfortunately my ancestors came from your cloudy islands and we never adapted to all this horrible sunlight I guess.
mrep 5y ago
Lol, as someone from Chicago, I thought the same. Then again, I like seasons so it doesn't seem that useful.

kevinsundar 5y ago

And this my friends is why I live in San Diego! I really do think tech will take off in this area soon. Its (relatively for CA) on the cheaper side for housing and great for remote work.

romanhn 5y ago
While still somewhat cheaper than prime Bay Area real estate in absolute sense, the price edge in San Diego and North County has rapidly diminished in the last couple of years. Bidding is extremely aggressive and many homes in the more desirable areas go pending within a few days, frequently with many offers multiple $100k's above asking price. Saw one go $1M above asking recently. It's pretty bonkers.
dartdartdart 5y ago
Why is it great for remote work? The land is already developed and the undeveloped areas get the sweltering sun of socal without the cooling ocean breeze to balance it out. The "good climate" only lasts for a mile or so from shore from

not2b 5y ago

A site like this should use the heat index or the wet bulb temperature. The reason is that 35 °C (95 °F) is fatal to humans within hours at 100% relative humidity, but relatively comfortable at 10% humidity for people who are drinking enough water and have sun protection.

photochemsyn 5y ago

Such zones won't necessarily be very stable. Current climate trends point towards an increase in hot humid conditions in some areas, increased aridity and drought in others, and associated extreme weather conditions. If there's any one culprit to point to, it's the water vapor increase (forced in turn by the increase in atmospheric fossil CO2 and CH4). This also affects wet-bulb temperature (which sets an upper limit on outdoor activity): https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-handle-how-climate-change-may-make-some-places-too-hot-to-live/ https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-ha... Climate-resistant design and construction is going to be a booming field in years to come. Termite-type underground construction, fire-resistant bunkers in dry zones, maybe flood-resistant floatable housing in flood zones, solar-powered AC units, etc. A lot of climates are more tolerable if you have a refuge to escape to.

foolfoolz 5y ago
they will be stable enough for your life time

smeej 5y ago

Reading the comments makes me wonder if I'm the only one who would even be interested in this, but I really like variety, so I'd love to be able to be able to layer semitranslucent layers on top of each other. It's probably way too much customization, but if I want somewhere that has at least 30 days that don't get over 30 degrees, as well as maybe 15 days above 90 degrees, I'd kind of have to have it open in two windows and compare locations myself, as opposed to being able to set which end of the color spectrum would be my "green" for each filter, layer them on top of each other, and just look for the greenest places. But it seems like most people have a preference for consistent weather, so you're probably nailing your target market's wishes! I already know I love where I live, too, so it'd be fun to look at where else might suit me, but I'm not making plans to move based on a hope of weather improvement.

kevmo314 5y ago
I also like variety. I would've liked to see how closely the temperature distribution in a cell matches a normal distribution parameterized by the slider instead of how many days fall in that bucket. That would reward closer matches over places that just maintain one temperature.
alecbz 5y ago
Yeah, big +1 on seasons and variety. I grew up on the east coast so I guess I'm just kind acclimated to it, but I never got being so obsessed with the weather. Like when I go outside and it's freezing, am I like "yay"? No. But there is a coziness to the winter I appreciate, getting to go inside and warm up. And then warmer weather starts to come, and you feel relieved by it, you get to actually be like "yay, Spring is here!", instead of just getting acclimated to it being spring all the time. You get to cycle through different fashion styles too (which until a few years ago I wouldn't have really thought about, but have started to care about more recently). I think happiness is more about deltas than steady state, and so I think it is actually nicer to get to experience the variety. But even ignoring all of that, the fact that weather is so important to someone that they consider moving over it just feels so alien to me.
- chockchocschoir 5y ago

upnick 5y ago

Any chance this can be made to work in countries besides the United States? The weather over here in Malaysia has been going insane - imagine 2 months worth in rain happening in 2 days.

at_a_remove 5y ago

In the lightning-unlikely chance that I had my druthers, I would go for something like a Koppen Cfb climate, probably near the Hoh rainforest: moderate temperatures, highly overcast, and quite damp. But not near a great number of people.

svilen_dobrev 5y ago

i have found some places that i like as climate... tried living there for some time.. but disliked the people. And moved away. so there are even less places that i feel compatible with, if measuring climate AND people .. anyway, YMMMV.

jakear 5y ago

Those finding fault in this may be better served by the B6ppen climate classification, which is a global index that takes into account not just temperature but also rainfall and whether the rain is strongest in summer or winter. Notably, it shows that the idyllic Mediterranean/Californian climate can also be found in parts of Western Australia, South Africa, and Chile. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classifica...

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Cape Town South Africa, Coastal Southern California/Mexico, and Pacific Northwest Jun to Sep are as good as it gets in my opinion. Nairobi is up there too, but I have not spent enough time there to know about year round.
- liversage 5y ago
  Medellín in Colombia sometimes described as the city of eternal spring is known for its perfect climate. In addition it's a very vibrant city.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Have not been there, but I look forward to visiting!
  - smcl 5y ago
    Ha I didn't know it had a special name, I found out about Medellin's climate when I was looking for a place which had the consistency of Singapore's climate but about 5C cooler. I found that Addis Ababa and Kigali are pretty similar, and though it's a couple of degrees cooler Quito's climate seems quite appealing too. I've been to none of these cities so I've no idea what they're like to visit or live in, but when I'm walking my dog in the morning and it's -1C on the 12th of March my mind wanders :-)
    - jakear 5y ago

carry_bit 5y ago

-10F isn't that cold. Maybe extend the bottom of the range (or provide a number input) for those of us who like the cold?

nemo1618 5y ago
I emphatically disagree, but I did notice that the full range of temperatures in the NOAA dataset is -30 to 120. I've updated the site to use that range.

Floegipoky 5y ago

Haven't seen USDA plant hardiness zones mentioned. Definitely less detailed but still very useful: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/pages/view-maps https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/pages/view-maps

ianbicking 5y ago
Plant zones seem very primitive to me, AFAICT based only on the maximum sustained cold. So for instance Duluth has a relatively higher hardiness zone rating than some areas around it, despite having a very narrow growing period, simply because in the depth of winter it doesn't get QUITE as cold due to Lake Superior. But most of the year it's quite a bit colder places around it due to that same lake!

disillusioned 5y ago

Do you really need a tool to just tell you "San Diego"? (I'm kidding, this is really neat.)

freedomben 5y ago

I've become a little obsessed with the history of the US in the 19th century, and this map does an amazing job at helping visualize the seriousness and difficulty that frontier livers and westward migrators faced back then. It's also just damn interesting as an interactive climate map!

OrlandoHakim 5y ago

This is an awesome visualization. A couple feature requests that would improve this - have an option to show the reverse of Min/Max days. i.e. Show me places where the temperature is below an extreme for a minimum number of days. - better accessibility, this color scheme doesn’t work for the color blind - what about wet vs dry days? i.e. Precipitation

mLuby 5y ago

Feature request: bugs! Don't know what kind of data sources there are for this but voracious insects can make an otherwise lovely climate unbearable.

zargon 5y ago
Another reason multiple temperature ranges are needed. Winter is lovely for variety and especially for killing the bugs. But too much winter can get tedious.

therealmarv 5y ago

Countries which use Fahrenheit: the United States, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Liberia, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. Please add a Celsius switch! Thanks from the rest of the World.

paxys 5y ago
Countries whose temperate data this site has: United States

paxys 5y ago

One thing that isn't very intuitive – on a map dealing with temperature you'd immediately expect a range of red to blue colors to represent hotter/colder regions. In this case, maybe a different color scheme would help in representing # days more clearly.

Animats 5y ago

Coastal LA - the only place in the US with a liveable climate that doesn't have hurricanes.

mrep 5y ago
Define "livable climate". Are Seasons too much to handle? Also, aren't you at risk for an insane 9.0 earthquake (was so when I live in Seattle I believe).

paxys 5y ago

San Diego is already now the more unaffordable city in the country. We don't need this.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fortysixdegrees 5y ago

I did a more comprehensive version of this analysis many years ago, and ended up moving to Guanajuato, Guanajuato Mexico as a result. And the climate was... Perfect.

kfrzcode 5y ago

> Fahrenheit

httpz 5y ago

I'd say the California weather tax is really worth it (for me). Climate plays a huge role in quality of life but it rarely comes up when people are comparing the next "tech hub" to move to.

almog 5y ago

I love it. Some more dimensions that would be nice to have: precipitation and unfortunately, air pollution index, especially in the west during summer.

airstrike 5y ago

There should be two sliders, for Fahrenheit and Celsius and dragging one would drag the other as well too... At a minimum, cycling through the 2 standards should be idempotent (or at least I think that's what it's called...)

blunte 5y ago

Ahh US only. Well, Puerto Rico it is then!

Brajeshwar 5y ago

I believe you are going to add more. Here are a few things I learnt after listening to a wealthy person looking for a place in India to build massive research, retreat kinda home, for his family, and the people who pop in to live their work. The temperature range is one of the many factors. Even in a hotter area (from statistics), you can create a pleasant environment around the year if you have enough space and strategically plant trees and other greens, without any artificial air conditioning. Soil: Look for soil quality and their changes over time and thus the likelihood of future quality. Water: This is one of the most important ones. I believe you want to live/retire in the outskirts, grow your food, etc. Water plays a crucial role in what you want to do and what life you will have. Calamities: History of natural calamities. The others will be crime rates, political unrests, and accessibility, depending on how far you want to stay away from the crowd. Nonetheless, your app is super cool and has given me ideas. Start with all the software possible and commission a small research team to pinpoint a few locations and zero in your final choices. ;-)

dzhiurgis 5y ago

I’m still looking for a place like Auckland (cuz property market) - 23 celcius for around 6 months, decent humidity. Azores seemed similar, but most maps forget humidity which makes it tad too warm.

ComputerGuru 5y ago

This is absolutely amazing but can I beg you to include an option to filter by dew point? I don’t care about hot but I cannot handle humidity!

muzani 5y ago
Having stayed in Australia and the Middle East for a while, high temperatures like 40 C are very livable when it's dry. While 32 C can be terrible indoors where it's humid. My home/office is loaded with dehumidifiers.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  The corollary to that: I'm from the Midwest where 40° F is t-shirt weather, but 80° in the Nevada desert doesn't feel much warmer than that.
blogush 5y ago
100% me too.

sytelus 5y ago

I wonder if it was possible to create geospatial database of temperature, humidity, sunshine times, population density, air quality etc and then do queries to find regions of interest.

davidandgoliath 5y ago
Specifically, relative humidity. :)

astrange 5y ago

I remember there was a site called "Teleport" for planning where to move to (climate, noise, good neighborhoods, etc) that I used last time I moved around in the Bay, but it got acquihired and shut down. Hopefully someone makes another one.

pharmakom 5y ago

This suggested the PNW to me, but doesn’t it rain there a lot? I think days of rain might be even more important than temperature to me.

foxhop 5y ago

u r a genius, u should share this with Oregon State University Permaculture department & say Russell sent u.

sokoloff 5y ago

Very nice and, like other commenters, I really like the responsiveness. Small bit: on an iPhone XS Max, the slider couldn’t be set to 20°F or 85°F. Making the control box slightly wider would probably allow that, but it took nothing away from the practical usability, of course.

cehrlich 5y ago

Fantastic project! I have no idea how feasible this is given the available data, but would be great to see it expanded to other continents. Also apparently the ideal place for me to live in America would be in a national park/forest. Time to change careers I guess.

danpalmer 5y ago

"Find your ideal climate" As long as it's in the US.

verisimi 5y ago

"Your ideal climate is Kiev!"

Decabytes 5y ago

Since my job allows me to work remotely, I based a large part of my decision to move by states that were in grow zone 6 and above in the US. I have a pretty good idea of where all those places are now. Surprisingly depending on where you are in the States, moving down one state south doesn’t change the weather appreciably

politician 5y ago

Awesome! Would you consider adding humidity, days of sunshine, and something like number of natural disasters?

irrational 5y ago

What about humidity? The colors make San Diego and Houston look similar, but one is much more humid than the other.

electrondood 5y ago

Ah. So that's why California real estate is so expensive. I was wishing there was something like this, that also took population demographics like age, gender balance, education level into consideration.

martininmelb 5y ago

I love the map. I love the responsiveness. I have done things with Leaflet and geoJSON and have always wanted to do hexagons. How did you convert the temperature data to hexagons? Or, more specifically, create the tesselation of hexagons? (I would like to do something similar for Australia where I live)

pyuser583 5y ago

Thank you! This is very useful!

ajbatac 5y ago

This is awesome! Great work.

blogush 5y ago

can you please add Humidity (RH) as well please?