As Earl said, this is the year-round average. Also remember that average does not mean what the temperature usually is. For instance, where I live gets up to the 70s, sometimes 80s, and occasionally, 90s in the summer. But in the winter it can get to -40, -50, sometimes even -60. If you go by the high being 70 and the low being -40, the average yearly temperature would be 55. But that does not at all represent how cold or how hot it can (and can be expected) to get here. Granted, that's the yearly temperature. I'm assuming these statistics are going by the daily average (adding the temperatures of each day together throughout the year, then dividing that), which would bring that number down significantly for most places.
akwildrose, wouldn't the average temperature be 15 in your scenario? 70+(-)40=30. 30/2=15. That would make sense as 15 is 55 away from -40 and 55 away from 70... Unless I am missing something?
50 degrees, fahrenheit, is too cold for human habitation in my opinion. But... mostly because I'm right about this... the reason why colder cities don't show up here is that while they exist in the US they don't have significant populations.
snow is awful and overrated. Maybe okay once every 3 years when you take a vacation to a ski lodge. Otherwise it should never be seen unless you are a child praying for a day off from school and an excuse to go sledding. No.. the ideal mean temperature is what I said, with as little variation as possible. 77-85 in the "summer" and 65-74 in the "winter" with sunshine every day only occasionally broken up be a gentle rain and a refreshing ocean breeze.... I'm not open to debate on this point.
50 degrees (Celsius) is also unfit for human habitation. I've lived through that, too, during the summer months in Riyadh. So... it should never read 50 on your thermometer regardless of what units you're using. (including and especially Kelvin) And if you actually turn the indoor thermostat to this temperature as my Arab coworkers did in Saudi Arabia... (so that it was 50 F inside and 50 C outside, ugh) that's insane and you should go live in Lapland with a herd of aurochs or something where you would be happier.
I just looked up the average temperature for the nearest city to me (Leeds, UK, which has 3 million people in the metro area), and it's around 9.4 Celsius or 49 Fahrenheit. And we live perfectly comfortably. So I don't know what you're talking about. It doesn't snow all that much, either, and there aren't any aurochs.
In Arizona, for that fact, in any of the southern states of the U.S. fifty or sixty degrees (Depending on which state you're talking about, but in Georgia, fifty degrees is cold!) is cold! (Southern California, depending on which season, and maybe Northern Cali in wildfire season! Cali has great weather, just don't mind the wildfires and earthquakes!) This coming from a Georgian (Not the country, but I love the country!) Floridians barely EVER get to experience Winter! Georgia has Winter every two to three years or so! I've been to all the states in the South of the U.S., and PLEASE! It's almost NEVER cold in the South of the U.S.! Remember-, we're closer to the equator than the states above us! States like New York, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, blah, blah, y'all are lucky to experience winter every year! (Not counting blizzards, although, please be safe and sheltered during blizzards! <3)
Anchorage is relatively temperate due to being close to the sea. It certainly can get cold, but it also doesn't get very hot, much like Portland and Seattle. If it cracks 80 up here, people go nuts.
Interesting. Yeah it gets above 80 Fahrenheit pretty regularly in the Twin Cities during the Summer, so it makes sense that Anchorage is colder on average then.
Was there a single comment thread started that didn't wonder why a city wasn't included, when they didn't read the caveats or couldn't just google that their little nominee had X number of people?
Spokane can get real cold during the winter. Only the coastal cities of the Pacific are moderate temps year round. Spokane is on the other side of the mountains, they they have far lower temps than the Seattle area.
This is not a complaint with the structure of this quiz, but with the structure of metro areas. Lots of major cities with significantly different cultures are lumped in with slightly larger, nearby cities. After all, "metro area" is just census-bureau code for "some counties close to each other". Which leads to some apparently glaring omissions on this quiz, most notably St. Paul and Tacoma. If you asked most people to make a list of coldest large US cities, these would be very reasonable answers. But since metro areas aren't really a good stand-in for cities, they end up off the list.
source: I'm a city planner