Best climates for living: What NOAA's normals say about year-round comfort, four seasons and extremes
Measured at the NOAA station that represents each, Newport Beach, CA and Oxnard, CA have the most days a year with a high between 60°F and 79°F of the 459 U.S. places of 50,000+ with their own NOAA station; 57 places have four distinct seasons with a January low of 20-34°F and a July high of 80-88°F.
First published · revised
A good climate is a personal choice: some people want snow at Christmas, others never want to scrape a windshield. This guide measures what can be measured (how many days are mild, how cold the coldest month gets, how hot the hottest) and names the places that sit at each end, so a reader can match them to their own wishes.
Where are the most days mild?
Days with a high between 60°F and 79°F, summed over NOAA's monthly day counts: Newport Beach, CA (326), Oxnard, CA (320), San Diego, CA (318), Redondo Beach, CA (317), Santa Barbara, CA (312), Chula Vista, CA (310), Oceanside, CA (307), Carlsbad, CA (306), Santa Monica, CA (306) and Torrance, CA (300). The median place of 50,000+ has 121.
Where are there four distinct seasons without extremes?
A January low between 20°F and 34°F gives a real winter; a July high between 80°F and 88°F a warm summer without constant 90s. 57 places of 50,000+ meet both; with the most mild days: Mableton, GA, Asheville, NC, Hampton, VA, Beaverton, OR, Durham, NC, Vancouver, WA, Virginia Beach, VA, Suffolk, VA, Corvallis, OR, Winston-Salem, NC, Eugene, OR and Hillsboro, OR.
Where does no month freeze?
219 places of 50,000+ have a January normal low above 32°F, so the coldest month's typical night stays above freezing. Their pages give the nights that still fall to 32°F in a normal year.
What these measures leave out
Humidity, sunshine and storms change how a climate feels as much as temperature. Each place page shows the summer dew point where NOAA keeps hourly records, the wet days and the snow, and the records that show how far a normal year can be from a hard one.
Source: NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 monthly and annual normals.