December 08, 2014

What U.S. CIty Has the Least Predictable Weather?

How many places have I visited where someone said, "If you don't like the weather here, just wait a while"?

Where is that statement truest? Rapid City, South Dakota.

So say Nate Silver, statistician and predictor of sporting events and elections, and his associate Reuben Fischer-Baum.

Among large metropolitan areas, it's Kansas City.

2 comments:

Peculiar said...

In my river guiding days, I think I heard that weather statement applied to every state in the union. "Ya know, back in Indiana we have a saying, if you don't like the weather...." And yet they always seemed a little flabbergasted that it might rain in the Idaho mountains in the summer.

And then there was the California guide on his first trip in Idaho, who had never had the thought that it might ever rain on a river trip.

I wish they'd run their analysis on data from some smaller towns in more mountainous areas, though. I suspect it'd liven up that map a great deal, at least in the West.

Chas S. Clifton said...

I think the Great Plains win because of the way large air masses slosh around — the "Alberta Clipper" and all that. Plus chinooks and upslopes next to the Rockies — no one can predict how long the latter will last, it seems to me.