Not getting four seasons.

I think you’ve gotten your answer, for the most part. Regions where that happens have been described. Do you have questions about a specific region or state?

Not sure I believe yourhumidity claim.

New England is probably as close as you get to true 4 seasons, but there does seem to be some climate change issues going on. Lately, winters (in lower New England) have seemed milder, but longer. The weather rarely gets and stays cold until after Thanksgiving and those old-fashioned White Christmases are rare. But spring seems to be coming later, with alternating periods of thaw and freeze that confuses the vegetation. And yes, we tend to skip the 70 degree days and cycle between 45 and rainy and 80+ and sunny in the spring.

This year, autumn started in late July with a long series of low humidity, unseasonally cool, dry days. September continued the recent trend of being warmer and more summer-like than one would expect – we haven’t been having early frosts at all, which doesn’t do much for the foliage.

I live in NW Oregon and we have 4 seasons: The Cool Wet (Fall), Cold Wet (Winter), Warm Wet (Spring) and the Dry (Summer, from July to Oct.).

LOL, I lived in Havre for a few years. Boy, you nailed it! That ever-present wind and the two wheat fields: One on one side of the road and one on the other side of the road. Well done. :slight_smile:

West Side of the Cascades, mid-Oregon:

Four perfectly defined seasons.

Winter: Cold but rarely below freezing for a sustained period. Known to get down into the teens. When it snows, it doesn’t usually stick around for longer than a couple of hours. There have been exceptions, but they are infrequent. Ice storms are a regular occurrence every few of years. Beautiful but treacherous. Winter is mostly a lot of rainy drizzle. It usually starts in earnest in November and carries on through May.

Spring: Busts out like a stripper from a cake starting around March. Begins with showy displays of daffodils everywhere, followed by tulips and rhododendrons, then everything you can think of. Fruit trees blossom, deciduous trees leaf out. Dogwoods are breathtaking. Color everywhere you look. People plant gardens too early. Green as hell. Temperatures usually low 50s to mid 60s during the day and down to around 40 at night.

Summer: Revs up in July and is generally over by the end of September. The rain leaves off for good, pastures turn dry and golden, the ever-present Douglas Fir trees begin to droop like sad old flowers in a vase. Fire season is real and scary. Temperatures range from mid 50s overnight to upper 80s during the day. Sometimes they climb to close to 100F for a few days.

Fall: Marked by the first sincere rain storm of the season, the one that signals fire season has come to another merciful end, around the beginning of October. Trees perk up, pastures turn lush green again, leaves turn all the beautiful colors and drop. Big piles of multi-colored leaves in the towns. The rains ease in, interpersed with sunny, cool, crisp clear days full of big blue skies and few clouds. A classic autumn. Temperatures are a comfortable 40s overnight to mid 60s during the day.

Humidity is ever present but rarely noticeable.

I’ve lived a fair few places including the ever-moderate Central Coast of California. (“Too hot? Open the window. Too cold? Close the window.”) Give me the gorgeous, changing but temperate seasons of Oregon. The only way I’ll leave is feet first.

North Carolina or Virginia would be my suggestion. Pennsylvania or Northern MD. Keep in mind that these folks have no patience with our central or south Texas ways of not driving in the snow. If you really want snow, the panhandle will give you all the snow and ice you could ever want most winters. My parents used to lose electricity for a week due to ice and high winds. Not my idea of a good time, but whatever floats your boat.

WAG: you’re sick and tired of Live Oak, Texas Oak and all the other evergreen oaks with their nasty little leaves that stay green (greenish anyway) all year. You can always check Texas A&M for trees you can plant that will flourish in Texas and turn colors. And take a yearly vacation in Blue Ridge Parkway.

4 seasons is way overrated, IMO, and not just the hotel, the climatological phenomenon too. As alluded to above, all it really means is you get a couple of weeks of temperate “nice” weather for Spring / Fall, then the rest of the year is Summer or Winter. And the winters in places with 4 seasons are awful! You’ve got to shovel snow, drive on ice, deal with a bunch of other idiots dangerously attempting to drive on ice, and not be able to go outside for months at a time. It’s no way to live. Sure, having leaves change colors is nice, but you’re willing to pay for some tarted-up leaves and a couple weeks of nice temperate weather with protracted, months-long awful winters every year?

I’m with jtur88, give me a nice tropical paradise where the only climate change is wet or dry, the sun is out every day, the beaches are warm, there’s a riot of greenery everywhere you look…and no winter! There’s a reason they call it paradise!

Wait, what? While I’d rather go outside in 50 degree weather than 20, I’d pick the 20 over 90. If it’s too cold you can always bundle up, but you can’t very well strip off your skin.

At 90 it’s just barely warm enough if you’re on the beach. 90 inland or in a swamp can be a bit much unless one is acclimated.

Never live someplace you can’t survive outdoors naked for 24 hours on any given day of the year.

I’d skip most of Canada. I’ve already seen the first snow of the season here, and I had to scrape the frost off my windshield this morning. We sort-of get four seasons, but fall and spring are only about three weeks long each, and winter is longer than the other three put together. (As the locals say, there’s almost-winter, winter, still-fucking-winter, and construction season.) The only part of Canada I lived in that had vaguely traditional seasons was when I lived in the southernmost part of BC.

I can’t even imaging living someplace I could survive outdoors naked for 24 hours on any given day of the year. Even during the hottest part of the summer here, it sometimes gets cold enough at night that you could suffer from exposure. Then again, that might be part of why there is more wildlife than people in any given square mile up here.

I was born and raised in Florida, which has one year-long hot and humid season (well, at least the southern part. It does get downright cold in North Florida in the winter).

Two years ago, I moved to Denver, and a huge part was the climate. I LOVE Denver weather.

Summer - It gets really hot due to the bright sunshine. But you can always get some relief in the shade, as it is a low humidity heat. Short and t-shirts are definite.
Autumn - It hit this year on a dime; the weather seemed to change as soon as the calendar switched. We get changing leaves and crisp, cool nights (especially if you want to venture into the mountains)
Winter - We get the best winters! Yes, they include snow. But they also boast of bright sunny skies. So, the snow doesn’t pile up and get dirty and gross. It melts in a day or two.
Spring - This is probably the most hit or miss season, since you’ll get a random snowstorm in the midst of days in the mid-70s. But when it’s nice, it’s amazingly nice. And the smell of flowers and the sight of busy bees is a pleasant experience.

Despite what the OP is hearing, the northeast, midwest and upper south (all of which I’ve lived in) experience four distinct seasons. They are often not equal in length or dependable in temperament, but they’re quite distinct and fall into the traditional categories of spring, summer, fall and winter.

Central Ohio does well in this regard. Spring is the most variable, and there are generally prolonged, temperate falls with lots of leaf color and mild weather usually through October. We get snow in winter, but not all that much (more than 30 inches is unusual, and some winters see less).

A Texan would probably find your version of a hot, humid summer to be hilarious, especially coming from Houston or Dallas. Heat waves in the Northeast might last a few days, or sometimes over a week - then the heat breaks and typical moderate summer weather returns. Most of Texas gets hot as hell and stays that way for months on end (in the Houston area true summer sets in by mid-May and lasts through September with no breaks unless you’re “lucky” enough to get a tropical storm or hurricane - just day after day of temps in the low to mid 90s and nighttime “lows” in the 70s).

You have to be careful about “four season” climates though. I see lots of job ads from places boasting of them, as if spring and fall truly exist when they’re each about two weeks long.

Oh yeah. Do NOT expect things to shut down just because of snow or ice. Unless there’s a shit ton of it, everything will be open. We don’t panic at the mere suggestion of a light dusting, like those pussies down South. :wink:

Amen. I adore the cold. There’s nothing I love more than curling up under a nice warm blanket with a cup of hot chocolate or coffee. I absolutely despise the heat. The only thing I like about summer is swimming, but you can’t sleep in a pool.
Plus summer means no hockey. :frowning:

It might be useful for the OP to tell us what he actually wants.

How hot is too hot? How cold is too cold? How much snow or darkness is too much?

If the OP wants to clean up leaves in the fall it won’t do to live someplace arid. E.g. the badlands have the traditional 4 seasons. But no leaves.

The quality of help you get depends entirely on the quality of the question you ask. With your title of “Not getting four seasons” I fully expected your complaint to be that you didn’t understand why anyone would want 4 seasons. Your post clarified that you wanted them. But not what those words mean to you. You’ve heard a lot of posters offer lots of varieties of “four seasons”. That’ll help you calibrate your answers.

Throw us a bone here.

My main gripe with the south is the weather. Western NC was nice (Waynesville, and outside of Asheville). NW Arkansas sounds pretty alright. Maybe western VA/eastern WV. But I can’t stand any summer humidity. Even southern Oregon is sweltering. Florida can go mold over.

Sooo… brisk, wind, dry, and construction season?

That’s exactly what I love about Virginia. It isn’t that it doesn’t get cold in winter and snow some—it does—but the beautiful thing is that winter doesn’t hang around too long like in northern Ohio where I grew up, where it stays frosty cold much too late into the spring. There, winter’s lease hath all too long a date.

Virginia has the four seasons in the right proportion to each other. You get enough winter that you really appreciate the spring, but you aren’t forced to wait around for what seems like forever. Virginia weather starts to turn awesome in early March. While living in the eternal summer of Malaysia, the constant heat and humidity were enervating and I pined for the change of seasons. Growing up in northern Ohio, I pined for a little more warmth. Virginia is my Goldilocks state.

There’s something about the southland in the springtime

Nonsense. We have three seasons: spring (hot), summer (really hot) and Christmas (hot and cold on alternating days). :smiley:

Too hot would be high 90s-100s.

Too cold would be the teens. I’m looking for 30s-40s.

I want a place where it snows in the winter and leaves change in the fall.

You’re not going to see much, if any snow if you don’t want to go below the 30s. Freezing temperature is 32, so 30s-40s is way too warm for snow.

This. With your criteria, you’ll see a sloppy, slushy, muddy mess once in a while. I prefer temps in the 10-20 degree range, preserving a nice picturesque snow that stays put, rather than the wet, cold, clothes-soaking slop you get in your preferred temp range.

OK, scratch that part. Too cold would be single digit or negative temperatures.