Where could I go in the world where I could find one type of climate here, and a drastically different climate right over there?
For example, on this 25km-long island, the east side is a desert that gets 4cm of rainfall per year, and the west side is a verdant tropical forest.
Let’s ignore drastic changes in elevation (I’m sure the top of Kilimanjaro is quite a bit less hospitable than it is down at the bottom).
I can tell you that on Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii, it actually snows, and it is not uncommon for people to go snow skiing up there in the morning, then head down to surf off the warm beach in the afternoon.
But you said no drastic changes in elevation. On the Malay peninsula, the thin Thailand portion can have different climates in a season. Can be rainy on one side but dry on the other.
Whenever I’m in San Francisco I go from foggy to sunny, windy to calm and cold to hot within blocks.
Mount Whitney to Death Valley might be noted.
We used to live in the Seacliff Beach area of Aptos. When Capitola/Santa Cruz was sunny and in the 90s, we were fogged in and mid 60s.
Calgary gets chinook winds in the winter which can raise the temperature from sub-zero C to the teens C in a matter of hours. Edmonton, about 4 hours drive to the north, does not get the chinooks. So somewhere between the two cities is the northern boundary of the chinook, so that might be something to consider.
On preview - you said climate not weather, so this may not be what you had in mind.
Maybe at the edge of a tepui. Of course, you could not simply walk from one zone into another, but the climate might be drastically different just a few inches away horizontally.
It has to be in New England. In the time it takes you to walk a short distance the weather will change dramatically.
If I remember correctly, on Oahu, just on the other side of the Punchbowl and Diamond Head, you turn a corner and enter the windward side of the island. One side of the corner is lush and verdant, and the other side of the corner is quite the opposite. A matter of a few hundred feet or less.
ETA: Very much like the tepui mentioned by njtt.
Barking Sands, Kauai gets about 8 inches of rain a year. Mt Waialeale, about 15 miles away, gets 40 feet of rain per year.
I’ve know of people in SF where the fog lines cuts right through the middle of their home. Nasty out the front door, beach party bingo out the back. I shit you not.
Like the OP said, ignoring changes in elevation…
I think the easiest to travel drastic change in the lower 48 of the US is the stretch of I-84 thru the Columbia River Gorge between Troutdale and The Dalles. Wet, near rain forest climate on the west end. Dry, sagebrush country on the east end.
Around Hood River is the greatest change. There’s hills with forests on the west side and sagebrush on the east side. Approaching The Dalles from the west, there is a curve on I-84 where the trees practically disappear.
When you go over the sepulveda pass from the San Fernando Valley into Los Angleles you may experience a 20 degree drop in temp sometimes durring the summer.
Do microclimates count? Because there can be some really abrupt and contrasting changes in those - for example, desert oases.
The surface of any body of water. One inch above is radically different from one inch below.
No changes in elevation allowed. You lose the thread.
Nope, the OP said “no drastic changes in elevation.”
Taiwan may be in the running. The Tropic of Cancer bisects the island as does a north-south mountain range, producing four different separate climates in an island about the size of Maryland.
The tropic lines aren’t an inherent climate boundary. All else being equal, the climate just north of a tropic is going to be very similar to the climate just south of it. If the climate is different in the northern part of Taiwan and the southern part, that’s probably due more to having open ocean on one side and a very nearby continent on the other.
The tropic lines (and also the polar circles) are astronomical boundaries. If you are on the tropic lines, the sun can appear at the zenith. If you are between them, then the sun can appear in either the northern or southern sky (or the zenith itself) at noon.
If you are above the Arctic circle or below the Antarctic circle, then there is no guarantee that there will be a sunrise or a sunset today. Welcome to northern Alaska, land of SAD.
Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph Glaciers in New Zealand.
Glaciers going through a rainforest. Does this qualify?