Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I mean it isn't, really. Mexico City is warm, year-round, when people are normally active. Yes, at 4 AM it's cool, year-round, in contrast to NYC and LA, due to extreme elevation, but who cares? You don't need any warm weather clothes in Mexico City.
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This is not really true. If you're out & about in the morning, say 7-8am to walk your talk, walk to the local bakery, waiting at the bus stop, etc, then temperatures at that time of the day will be pretty close to the daily low. If you're someone who owns a dog or walks/takes transit for commuting and works indoors, then the early mornings will be close to 50% of your time spent outdoors (the rest being in the late afternoon/evening).
Here on the shores of Lake Ontario, the average low temperature experienced in 6am-9am time range in the past 10 days has been 20C, with a range of 16-24C. 16C is a touch chilly, but usually mornings are free of wind, so you can still go out in your shorts and t-shirts. In Mexico City it has been averaging at 14C, with a range of 13-16C, which would have you gravitating towards long sleeves, especially since it's drier and the sun rises later (at 7:12am in Mexico City vs 6:06am here). And certainly you'll be wearing long sleeves if you have to go to work in January and it's 8C at 7am and still dark.
Obviously Mexico City is still warmer than the Great Lakes in terms of the annual average, and temperatures fall within the "pleasant range" for a longer part of the year.
Obviously very few cities will have cold summers. Cities will generally be located in places where agriculture is viable, and it won't be viable if you have no growing season. If the winters are cold, you can still grow stuff if the summers are warm, but you still need the summers to be warm. Pretty much every major city will have summers that are at a minimum, mild, and possibly quite hot.
I thought it would be more interesting to rank cities by summer temperature. We're at that time of year where many people are complaining about heat waves. Well these are the cities where you can go to escape heat waves, and the cities to avoid (at least in the summer) if you dislike extreme heat.
Mexico City falls into the category of mild, which is to say, pleasant summers, no matter how you slice it. By and large Canada and Europe also falls into the category of mild & pleasant summers too. Their summers don't get as hot as West Africa, Southern China, the Southern US or Indonesia, much less the Indus Valley or Persian Gulf.
Posting a ranking of coldest winters or average annual mean would yield more predictable results. But this makes for a more interesting thread idea. Still valid too, because people tend to notice the extremes of their experiences more than the averages, and when "Hotlanta" is still cooler than over half the cities on this list in the summer, you know that there's a lot of people in the world that have to deal with rather intense heat for at least part of the year.
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