Where To Move If You're Fed Up With The Snow

Does this miserable winter have you considering relocation? Me too. I've lived in the Midwest or the Northeast for my entire life and am for the first time ever really questioning the wisdom of that decision thanks to the nearly four feet of snow that has already fallen on New York City this winter. But where to? Where does one go in order to achieve the optimal amount of awesome weather?

Enter Atlanta-based designer and software engineer Kelly Norton. Norton spent much of this January in NYC, and was greeted on each arrival with frigid cold and ice, which got him wondering — where's the good weather hiding? First he determined what constitutes good weather, settling on days where the mean temperature was between 55 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, with a minimum above 45 and a maximum below 85, and no significant precipitation or snow depth. Then he did some complicated data jiujitsu, aggregating 23 years of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) to determine which U.S. cities had the greatest number of pleasant days. So, considerably more exact that my personal barometers of "Can I wear sandals?" and "Is it iced coffee weather?" Not to nitpick, but days when the temp dips below the 50 degree mark at all are not days when the answer to either question is yes, and maybe days of sunshine should have been taken into account too, because, you know, Seasonal Affective Disorder. But I digress.

Norton created a seriously awesome map of the entire country so you can pinpoint how many pleasant days you can expect in your particular location, and he determined the five U.S. cities with the most pleasant weather days and the five U.S. cities with the fewest. Drumroll please...

Damn you, Los Angeles! I should have known my NYC superiority complex over L.A. was born out of pure jealousy. See where your city stands here.

Image: Getty Images