Right next door to you: move to the high desert, Santa Fe. 7000’ elevation.
Winters are cold, but not Minnesota cold. Rarely more than a few inches of snow, and always plenty of sunshine to melt it off.
Peak summer usually gets into the low 90s for a couple of weeks, but humidity is so low that I don’t use A/C. It always cools off by early evening. “Monsoon season” with frequent thunderstorms for a month or two in late summer.
In summary: distinct seasons; lots of sunshine all year; low humidity. Best climate that I’ve ever experienced. Out of range of both Hurricanes and North Korea.
Winter: Cold and snowy. Temperatures down to double-digit sub-zero Fahrenheit, sometimes, but not often. Plenty of ice, but not usually windy. November through March, depending on year.
Spring: Warming, but still cool and damp, occasionally alternating with a late snowfall. Pretty reliably March through May or June.
Summer: June is rainy, turning to hot and dry by July. There’s sometimes a ban on fireworks out in the country on July 4 due to fire conditions, but August and September is more prime fire season. Triple digits are known but uncommon, and there is essentially no humidity, and variable amounts of wind. Red flag warnings (hot, dry, windy) for fire conditions are common.
Fall: This one is variable. Sometimes we get a fall, sometimes we don’t. This year we got one, from late September through October, and it could even last through the rest of October. Cool and rainy, but still above freezing, and if it snows it doesn’t stick.
Havre, MT
Winter: Rura Penthe without the Klingons. Frozen solid, windy as Hell, and absolutely dead. The snow falls and drifts in double-digit winds, it gets down to twenty below regularly, and, on occasion, colder, and the sky is a perfect pale blue. In the absolute dead of night, when it’s at its coldest, the wind stops and it’s just you and the night sky, with a billion stars shining through jewel-still air, barely twinkling. November through February or March.
Spring: Melt. Havre floods every so often from snow melt and lack of drainage. Wind. March through June.
Summer: June is rainy in Havre, too, but this takes the form of periodic thunderstorms which blow through. These storms never fully stop, and neither does the wind, which alternates between light but omnipresent and strong and omnipresent. I once saw the wind in Havre pick up and blow around an empty black plastic dumpster, one of those round ones with the big opening in the front. When it isn’t storming, the landscape is the Ukrainian flag: Perfect blue sky above, perfect yellow-brown field below, absolutely straight line between. It sets an ISO/ANSI standard for boring. July through early September.
Fall: Rain and sleet, grey skies, and cold wind. Later September through October.
You posted while I was Editing. I recall Albuquerque had 10 days of unbearable heat in the summer, then the rest of the time was not bad at all. But I can’t argue against Santa Fe, I love that city, but it is costly.
Plus the part of Albuquerque right at the base of Sandia Mountain is also 7000 feet, if I recall correctly. The city is 5000-7000 feet, depending on where you are.
Jakarta, Indonesia, where I mostly live: We have “rainy season” and “dry season (actually the Indonesian term for it translates as ‘hot season’).” In the past, it rained occasionally during “dry season” and predictably every afternoon and evening during rainy season. Now the variation is less pronounced, but it still rains a lot during rainy season.
The island of Hawaii, where I live the rest of the time: It’s pleasant year-round at sea level, but hotter in the summer and cooler in the winter. It snows on Mauna Kea during winter, occasionally with blizzard-like conditions.
I live in Massachusetts and, as noted, the claim of 4 seasons is overblown. Spring barely exists many years and Fall is much shorter than most people like to admit. It is still summer-like right now but it will shift to Fall for a few weeks soon and then just go straight into Winter.
I hate much of the Boston area weather. Everything is generally fine up into about Christmas and then things go all to hell. I define everything from Christmas up until a little before Memorial Day as its own season called “The Dead Period”. It is cold, windy, muddy, snowy, rainy and just generally unpleasant. It wouldn’t be so bad if The Dead Period didn’t last about 5 months of the year. There is a reason flights to the Caribbean are booked solid from Boston during January and February.
Being raised mostly in Arizona I’ve never understood this fetish for four seasons. That and our “winter visitors” who come and whine about how, “It just doesn’t seem like Christmas.” We just point out that the climate here is a lot closer to that in the holy land than anything involving snow, holly leaves, and frosted window panes.
This is close to what I was going to say, which is Charlotte, NC.
I lived there for 2 years and experienced all 4 seasons, although not for any long stretches of time. There were distinct times in the late fall/early winter (November-January) I remember layering up and turning on the heated seats because it was in the 30s and 40s. Late Jan/Early Feb usually had an ice or snow storm for about 2 weeks. Then it gradually warmed up and hit summer pretty quickly, which was usually quite hot (90s) and humid.
Summer definitely last the longest, but there were distinct seasons as far as I remember
I’m going to second NC, though I’d suggest central NC as it has a little milder winters than western NC. There are four very distinct seasons, including mild, wet springs; hot, sunny (but not dry) summers; cool autumns with beautiful foliage; and cold winters (with some snow, but not usually enough to cause major problems). Western NC (around Asheville) does have slightly cooler summers, but it still gets pretty hot.
A humorous anecdote about moving from New England to NC:
My wife moved from CT to NC about ten years ago in November. She wanted to fence the yard of her house for her dogs. She got several quotes and then told me that she would write a check and start work as soon as spring came. I asked her why and she explained that she would wait until the ground thawed. I was laughing before she finished.
What really makes the seasons in Missouri is how the foliage changes color
Winter - trees and grass are brown
Spring - trees and grass turn green
Summer - trees stay green, grass turns brown
Fall – grass turns green again, trees turn brown
