Preach it, 'Mika. Ja, winter is brutal up here, but it serves three purposes:
[ol]
[li]Kills bugs. I like this feature[/li][li]Adds variety. I love my four seasons; wouldn’t give them up.[/li][li]Keeps the riff-raff out.[/li][/ol]
My brother lived in Florida for a while - yearly fumigation/pest treatment was just a given. I can’t imagine this. Ick.
A lot of my friends want to leave Ireland to move to Australia, primarily because of the climate. I find the climate in Dublin at least to be perfect for me. It rains quite a bit but not as much as in much of the rest of the country.
Because we like the weather we do have.
I love winter. I love snow. I enjoy shoveling or snowblowing. I like being able to ice-skate outside on any one of the dozens of outdoor rinks. I like bundling up in my winter clothes. I like cross-country skiing. I like sledding. I like watching it snow. In the fall, I love the changing colours. I love the warmth in the day and the chill at night. I love sugaring weather in the springtime. I love the summer and playing in the river and watching people canoe down the canal. I love being by the rivers when it’s hot.
Bad climate is subjective. As far as I’m concerned, this is a great climate.
The climate back home is perfect 50-80 degrees it rains in the winter and is dry in the summer. I left because the price for an average home was over $600K (this was two years ago) and I can make about twice as much living in the middle of no where and dealing with heat and cold.
I’d much prefer to move back but until I can find a job that will allow me to live in a real house and not have roommates it’s not realistic. For me the reason to live in a place with a not perfect climate is lifestyle. I left my friends, my family and perfect weather to I could have a good job and live an upper middle class life style.
I wouldn’t live in a place with bad weather though I refuse to move to Houston and have turned down higher paying jobs that would have put me there. I’d rather have horrible winters then hot and humid summers so I moved to the middle ground rather then bad.
East Tennessee has hot and humid summers, but spring and autumn are fantastic, and winter is relatively mild, with the lows almost never reaching single digits. Plus, we don’t really get any natural disasters in my area. There aren’t any large bodies of water near enough to worry about flooding, there are no major faultlines nearby, and the mountains protect us from large amounts of snow and tornadoes.
A lot of people think the British climate sucks. It really doesn’t, most of the time. (At least in the southeast, where I live, which has more of a continental influence).
Summers are usually pleasantly warm, almost never too hot. (A lot of people were complaining about it being too hot last week, when the temperature had the temerity to hit 89F, but I love warmth and won’t complain until it’s around 100F.) And it doesn’t reain that much in my part of the country - until this week I don’t think we had a drop of rain for three weeks or more.
Autumns are often crisp and sunny, with frosts in the morning to make it look pretty, and occasional seasonal mists, and daytime highs that can reach 60F or more.
Winter is generally my least favourite season, simply because we so rarely get a winter. I love snow and ice, but it’s a rare treat when it does come. (The benefit is that, because it is so rare, you can usually count on a day off if there’s more than 2 inches!) Unfortunately, January days are more often in the mid-50s, grey, windy and wet. When we do get clear, crisp chilly winter days, though, I love it.
And spring - what’s not to like? The days getting longer is a big plus - being quite far north, even the southern UK gets daylight till past 10pm in high summer.
Not all places with a good climate are crowded. Almost the whole US west coast has a climate similar to the bay area and not all of it is developed.
I think it is a very interesting question, without really meaning to.
From my own personal experience, I found people adapt. I lived in Florida, in the Keys, West Palm Beach and Naples. I didn’t have air conditioning, people would say “How could you live without air?” Well you adapt. I remember when I left Chicago and moved to Marathon in the Florida Keys. It was 50ºF (10ºC) and I was running around in short pants. When I left Florida years later, it was 75ºF(24ºC) and I was wearing a sweater.
You adjust over time.
But interestingly enough we as a nation, do NOT like living in cold climates. It is very interesting that we find places like Las Vegas and Phoenix would be limited if not for mass construction of dams on the Colorado River. Las Vegas would support around 10,000 people and Phoenix around 25,000 without the river. Los Angeles at most could support 4 million people without the Colorado River. But today the Greater L.A. area has near 15 million.
Texas and Florida are booming. We are short of water in Atlanta and all over the south. BUT people AND businesses are moving there. Why? Climate.
Contrast to such cities as Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee. The great lakes provide massive amounts of water and energy. Yet business are LEAVING those areas for southern areas. Yet we can see Toronto is booming. And it’s in the nicer part of Canada, climate-wise.
So in a way the OP is posing a much more interesting question. How much is it worth to have a nice climate?
When businesses started moving south it was for 2 reasons - cheap labor and no unions. Climate was not a big factor.
And now they are moving to even cheaper labor - China, India, etc.
Everyone’s definition of “bad climate” is different.
I spent 11 years in Boulder, CO - which a lot of people think is a GREAT climate. Me? I got bored. Not enough seasons. It was pretty much 50 degrees and sunny or 100 degrees and sunny. Summers sucked because it was dry & brown & too hot.
Back in da UP, I get 4 distinct seasons. I look forward to the first big snow of the winter the same way I look forward to the first 80 degree beach day of the summer. I like having different things to do all the time - in the summer I bike & hike & kayak. In the winters I ski & snowshoe. In the summers I grill out; in the winters I braise things long & slow in the oven. In the summers I like to spend warm afternoons reading on the deck; in the winters I curl up in front of the fire with a good book.
The autumns are gorgeous with their colors. The only season that really isn’t great is the spring - it tends to be muddy. But I’m usually so happy the snow is melting that it doesn’t matter.
This is a climate that most people think of as their worst nightmare, but I think is wonderful. I’d hate to live somewhere that is warm & sunny all year round.
Is that yearly fumigation/pest treatement for the bugs or the riff-faff? 
I don’t live there, but have you BEEN to Wyoming? The habitable parts are some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.
enipla is at nearly twice the altitude I am and in a different state (I’m in south-central Idaho), but take what he said and take it down a notch or three and you’ve got me, though I can see living in a city again. Portland, perhaps. I’d miss the snow, though.
I’ve never lived anywhere before here with such distinct seasons, and where summer didn’t kick my ass. I detest heat and humidity. I will be visiting it for a week next month and know I will be dying to get back very quickly! If my ass is going to be kicked by weather I’d rather it be winter. I love snow. I think the hottest day last year was about 90F, and it’s so dry here that it didn’t really bother me even though I was outside most of the day. I do not have AC in my house. The AC in my car has been slowly crapping out and I haven’t bothered to fix it. I don’t need it. Imagine that.
After a childhood in Texas and thereafter living in other too damn hot places, I no longer dread the month of August. This is a lovely climate, if you like winter.
There’s no such thing as bad weather, just inadequate clothing.
Well said.
For me it’s the giant water bugs, or toe biters as the locals call them.
There are a few places where the temperature can get up to 130+ degrees. Not sure what would constitute adequate clothing for those places.
I’d love to know why the Vikings chose such inhospitable climes.
But for individuals in the modern age, it’s usually a practical necessity coupled with it having a personal appeal.
Yes, but for excessive cold, you can get comfortable by adding layers.
For excessive wet, you put on a slicker.
For excessive heat, you take off layers, but after you reach bare skin, you can’t do any more. A summer in Houston would be unbearable for me, even if I were nekkid all the time.*
That’s why I live in the northern U.S. – Minnesota. Here I can deal with the cold with proper clothing choices.
The perfect climate for me would be some place where year-round it was 50-95F, few bugs, had no more than moderate humidity (high is an asthma trigger for me), lots of cloudy days (I burn easy), no earthquakes or tornados and no more hurricanes than I’m used to, and only moderate amounts of rain.
Since that fairytale land doesn’t exist, I guess I’ll stay here and bitch about the weather.