Here in New York City, there are about two weeks every year when the weather is genuinely beautiful. These are the magical days when tourists marvel at the city, bathe in the gentle sunshine, and whisper to one another, “I could live here!” And then it just gets obnoxiously hot for four months. The idea that there are periods of the year when the weather is reliably pleasant leads to another question: Is there a single day when the weather is at its best?
Of course, the definition of what “good weather” constitutes is subjective—for everyone who likes the heat, there’s someone else who has set up camp next to their window AC and is refusing to move for several months. But for the sake of the argument, let’s go with the idea that pleasant weather comprises a sunny day when the temperature is neither extremely cold nor extremely hot, there’s no rain, and there’s perhaps a gentle breeze.
If that’s the case, we’d expect the optimal day to be sometime during spring or fall. The USA’s perfect weather day has long been held to be April 25, largely because it’s deemed as such during a scene in the 2000 film Miss Congeniality, wherein Miss Rhode Island—played by Heather Burns—replies to a question about her perfect date by citing “April 25th, because it’s not too hot and not too cold. All you need is a light jacket.”
The thing is, this may well be true in Rhode Island, but according to new research carried out by the weather forecasting site WeatherBug, it ain’t true for the USA as a whole. The site’s meteorology team went in search of the day of the year that “most reliably delivers mild temperatures and low precipitation.” And the answer is… October 8. That date “sees about 0.0573” of rainfall nationwide and an average temperature of around 66°F.”
As the above chart shows, October absolutely dominates the perfect weather charts. In fairness to Miss Rhode Island, late April is also nice, but April 25 doesn’t get anywhere near the top of the list; in fact, 0.1297 of rain and temps around 60°F place it at a miserable 80th on the list of good weather days.
Of course, this is all about averages, and this exercise also serves to highlight that the USA is a very diverse country when it comes to climate zones. There are several ways to categorize climatic types, but the most commonly used is the Köppen climate classification system, which specifies five broad types of climate: tropical (type A), arid (B), temperate (C), continental (D), and polar (E). Each of these contains one or more sub-types, yielding a total of 31 different climate types. The USA currently contains regions with climates falling into all five major categories, and all but a couple of the minor categories. (It’s hard to state definitively how many different climate zones exist here, because—in case you hadn’t heard—the world’s climate is also changing!)
This climatic diversity makes identifying a single perfect day kinda difficult—the most pleasant day in the type Cwb climate (temperate, dry winter, warm summer) of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula is likely to be at a very different time than in, say, Arizona’s type BWh climate (dry, hot, arid desert). But! On average! The best day of the year is October 8. In fact, October absolutely dominated the charts, snagging all of the top 5 slots on the chart.
Also, the first person to refer to making plans on this date as “weathermaxxing” will be fired out of a large cannon into the sun. Those are the rules.
Read the full article here
