Of course in the climate I live in I almost never have to put up with high humidity, so hot weather has its own special comforts. I like being able to go out for a whole day in just jeans and a shortsleeved shirt. It’s great not to have to carry any sweater or jacket. On the other hand, in the same kind of weather, if I were required to wear a suit and tie, I’d be miserable.
So…I guess it comes down to the kind of clothing I can wear or not wear. If I can get away with wearing little or nothing, hot is good. If I have to wear restrictive items of clothing such as a tie, then cold is better.
I’d rather be cold. And I say that after just now coming out of another bitter Wisconsin winter.
I am getting ready to enjoy the delightful WI spring, knowing that those few days of Hellish summer are on the horizon.
I hate the kind of heat we get on the worst days of summer. I hate sweating while I drive home from work (no AC in the car), I hate sweating like a fountain while mowing the lawn, and I especially hate sweating while just sitting still.
I’ve laughed in the face of the cold in December in the bleachers of Lambeau Field, but those July and August days when it’s 97 and the humidity is 85% just wipe me out.
I’ll take cold anytime.
I really really hate the cold. Mainly because I can never seem to get warm in the winter, except on rare occasions. I drive my roomies nuts because I turn the heat up often and they say it’s perfectly fine inside, so why have I turned it up?
This is also when I’m usually running around wearing polar fleece and my moccassins. I’d prefer not to have to wear my jacket indoors. Which I have. Sometimes I get so cold sitting inside that I pull on my jacket. I’ll be switching to polar fleece shortly right now actually because I’m getting cold and earlier this week I even slept in my hoodie while huddled up beneath a pile of blankets.
Too hot I can wear shorts/sarongs and light cotton tops, and sleep on the balcony at night when it’s cooler (which I did last summer when we were breaking heat records)
I’ve never been a fan of the cold, living in northern NY the only good thing about it is the skiing.
I think in my former life I must have been an orchid.
After nearly 40 years of living in Chicago, you’d think I’d be used to the winters here. Nope. I hate winter. Hate cold. Hate snow. Hate grey, gloomy days. Hate that nasty, wet wind that just drives through you and chills you bone deep. I sleep under an electric blanket turned to “broil” and a quilt over that.
Summer… ahhh. Heat? Bring it on, you won’t hear me complain until it hits 100. Humidity? Fine by me! Open the windows and lemme hear those crickets sing.
Today it was almost 80 degrees (F) here. This is the happiest I have been since last September.
I love the heat, I just soak it up. And I don’t sweat much.
Cold weather just makes me pee more. And I hate having to wear a ton of clothing to keep my skinny body warm.
I used to love the cold, and the snow. Then I got a car. Wasn’t very long after that, that I moved to California. 
Stints in Mississippi and Kuwait have increased my heat tolerance, while decreasing my ability to take the cold.
This is strange. I also hate the cold for this reason, but I have never met anyone else who has this allergy. I live in MI, and I have just gotten used to the fact that I will never do any outsidy things in the winter. Therefore, I don’t see any good to come out of snow, and the driving sucks. I hate wearing 10 layers of clothing to do things like sledding.
I am not particularly fond of the heat, but at least it doesn’t give me hives.
I’ve gotta go with preferring to be too cold. My philosophy is that you can always throw on more clothes for warmth when cold. When it’s hot, once you get down to the skin you’re either screwed or in a Robbie Williams music video.
Too cold is worse. It’s more expensive, and possibly life threatening. I’ve got AC in my car and a bunch of well placed fans in the home usually do the trick when it’s hot.
I used to work with a woman, who I heard died from the heat while she was rock hunting at Calico Ghost Town near Barstow.
How 'bout solving this debate with FACTS, not just opinions.?
Sure, some people claim they suffer more from heat than cold, and others claim exactly the opposite. But there’s a simple test, which proves my claim that heat is great, and cold is painful.
We human beings evolved in Africa, right–not Alaska.
Get naked --and test the weather: on a 95 degree summer day, you can sit outside all day.You may be a bit uncomfortable, but all you need to stay alive is some water to drink.
Now , try the same thing in December at 10 degrees below zero. You will DIE within 15 minutes.
So obviously, heat = good,
and cold = dangerous to survival
It’s a biological fact!
Hmmm, your heat propaganda is easily apparant as faulty logic. Comparing 20 degrees F over room temperature with 70 degrees F under room temperature. Hah!
Give me 55 F over 95 F anyday. And 50 F over 100 F. I’d dance if it was 30 F rather then 120 F. At 10 F I’d laugh safely upwind at your 140 F. When it hit 0 F I’d start chatting up the ladies about some “warming up excercises” while across the room I see the folks at 150 F all warning each other to stay at leave 5 feet away all while. At -10 F I’d stroll about in my 6 inches of insulating warmth as I watch you lie naked under a withered tree and twitch in the 160 degree heat. When it finally hits -30 F and I’m forced to cut open a tauntaun and climb in I look back at your body having gone far past cooked and edging towards burnt in your 180 F and chuckle sadly at how wrong you were.
Fern Forest–I dont quite get your post-(my theory was based on both of us being "naked, the way nature made us–“au natural”–And a naked human at 95 degrees feels okay, but very few people would dance at 30 degrees–they would be dead from frostbite.
But feel free to disagree with me–it’s all for fun, anway. But there’s one thing I dont get at all–if ya really wanna dance at 30 degrees F–whatcha doin’ living in Waikiki ???
A-Ha! A convenient premise from the heat lobby. Why should we discard clothing when it’s been around for more then 25,000 years? Plus they can look quite stylish.
Now to further prove my point we could make a graph like so. On the X-axis would be a line showing temperature as increasing to the right. On the Y-axis would be another line showing amount of clothing to be comfortable as increasing to the up. And if you plot the data points you could gather from the populace at large you’d see the slope that would be negative which could indicate that at about 95 F you need to be naked. To be comfortable at 100 F you’d have to be wearing a pair of anti-underpants which of course would cause you to explode in a wave of pure energy when you tried to put them on. Whereas I, down at 55 F can just slip on a jacket and a hat and mosey comfortably on my way with no, I repeat NO, massive explosions killing millions of people.
As for me living in Waikiki, I have to since I’m a care giver to a shut-in and if I could drop the temperature 30 degrees F right now I would.
Being too cold is worse. I would much rather be too hot. Too hot isn’t prone to weather that needs to be shoveled out of the driveway, leading to aching muscles. Too hot doesn’t make my knee ache as much. Too hot doesn’t make it hard to open my car door or start the engine, making me more stressed out. Too hot doesn’t make road conditions more dangerous, giving me an anxiety attack. Too hot doesn’t make me need to put on boots when I’d rather be barefoot. And, most importantly, Too hot only lasts 2-3 months, not six; I’ve never felt depressed because it seems like the too hot weather will never end.
I would much rather be hot than cold. I’m really having trouble dealing with this winter in New England, and all the snow we’ve had.
My wife is the opposite - she’d rather have it cold.
Perhaps related - I grew up in hot parts of Texas, she was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Washington and Kansas.
To make you feel better… on a scale of 1-10, 1 being most mild and 10 being most severe, this winter was between 7.5 and 8. Everyone around here agrees on two things: it’s been a bad winter; but not as bad as the winter of 2002- which is the worst winter anyone I know (including people 70+ who are native New Englanders) can remember. So cheer up, it might occasionally be worse, but it’s usually better 
I have never (well, not since I was four years old) been in extreme cold. That said, I think I’d still prefer heat because it’s nice to be able to go swimming at the beach on really really hot days…can’t do that in the cold…plus I really have no idea how to deal with really cold cold, as I have no warm clothes. This whole thread reminds me of my parents…my mother was born and raised in Hawaii while my father comes from far up in Canada. Every season, if you could call Californian weather seasonal, they have an all out war over the temperature of the house. My mother always wants the heat on in the winter and my father always wants the AC blasting in the summer. There have been fights where one checks into a hotel for the night rather than stay in the unheated or unairconditioned house! Over the years, they have finally reached an agreement, no AC, no heat…so basically it just means that everyone else in the house suffers!
When you are just slightly too hot, you can get comfortable by getting down to your skivvies, and go for a swim. You can move around very easily.
When you are just slightly too cold, you can get comfortable by putting on more clothes, which limits your movement and makes you less comfortable. Well, me anyway. I don’t like bunched up clothes. I have sensitive skin so I feel every wrinkle and it takes me forever to get comfortable. I prefer to go au naturale as much as I can. I will say that it’s easier to breathe cold air than hot air, and I’ll just bet that makes a big difference for a lot of people, who don’t breathe too easy. “Heat is just too stifling!”
Of course the more extreme the two temperatures, the more cold is favored because our brains have given us clothing. It’s only natural that our bodies would be designed to thrive naked in the areas we were invented. It requires an unnatural element (clothing) to keep us alive when the temperatures get too cold. So I can see the argument, but I don’t agree with it. Houston is HOT! And I LOVE it that way!
Interestingly this is the fattest city in America, or is it the world? Did you also know that Houston is the most air conditioned city in the world? Coincidence?