The idea of perfect weather is as crazy as the idea of a perfect world or a perfect anything. One person’s ideal weather is another’s worst day. The funny thing about weather is that some people enjoy what most of us consider the worst weather (snowstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes). We’ve had people ask us where to move to for the best place to see tornadoes, believe it or not. To help us answer the question of “perfect” weather, we polled our Facebook fans. The consensus seemed to be for clear blue skies, low humidity, temperatures around 75°F, and a light wind. Yet others said snow and lots of it. So instead of picking perfect weather we’re picking far-from-perfect or “worst” weather.
Worst Winter Cities
How We Chose
The following list took a number of meteorological factors into consideration, as well as the population size of the cities. We set a limit of a population of at least 50,000 people. Interestingly, from our original “10 Worst” list of 2002, two cities, Syracuse and New Orleans, made it onto our Worst Weather list. Here are our listings for the ten cities, five each with the worst winter and worst summer weather in the United States.
DETROIT, MICHIGAN The hardest thing to adjust to in a Motor City winter is not so much the cold or wintry precipitation, it is the lack of sunshine. Winter days in Detroit mean an abundance of cloudy, gloomy days. The sky seems to be perpetually gray. During the winter season, two out of every three days are overcast. Clear, sunny days occur, on average, just 13 percent of the time.
CLEVELAND, OHIO The earmarks of Cleveland winters are cold and snow. Typically, there are an average of five days with subzero temperatures. Mean annual snowfall increases, from west to east in Cuyahoga County, from 45 to 90 inches. Winds generally blow across Lake Erie from the west and cause localized snow squalls in the city’s eastern suburbs.
CASPER, WYOMING Snow is common in this town and has occurred as early as September and as late as early June. The average daily winter temperature is 22°F, and on average, 181 days of the year have temperatures at or below 32°F. Casper is among the top five most windiest spots in the nation. The prevailing winter wind blows from the southwest, with the emphasis on “blows.” Some wind gusts have been clocked at over 60 m.p.h. The wind has knocked tractor-trailers off interstates. As one native put it: “In the winter we have snow followed by wind, wind followed by snow, and wind and snow together. In some places the snow never hits the ground but gets worn out by the wind.” And the late Jean Shepherd wrote: “Let me tell you, you’ve never been in a blizzard until you’ve been in a real Wyoming screamer. The snow was coming down so fast and hard that I felt I was driving through a white tunnel. It got colder and colder, and my windshield was freezing up faster than the defrosters could blow it off.
DULUTH, MINNESOTA “Frigid” is how many describe Duluth. During the winter, it’s second only to International Falls (“The Icebox of the Nation”) in terms of rank among the nation’s coldest cities. The transition to bitter winter weather is dramatic. In October, the average high temperature is a comfortable 53°F. But by December, it has fallen to 22°F, and by January (the coldest month), it’s only 16°F. An example of how extreme the cold can get here is “The Great Cold Snap of 1996” (January 29 through February 5). During that time, Duluth recorded 164 consecutive hours of below zero (°F) temperatures. On February 2, the low temperature was minus 39°F and the high temperature was minus 21°F. Duluth receives nearly 80 inches of snow, much of it as a result of cold easterly winds flowing over the western tip of Lake Superior, producing local lake-effect snowfalls. But it’s the frigid cold that gets Duluth a spot on our Top 5 list.
Do you have a worst winter weather city that should make the list? Tell us about it.
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