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PaperclipPerfector  18hr ago (text post)   740 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 20, 2025

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Different perspectives on weather

I was always surprised growing up whenever I would see westerners on TV talk about "Sunshine and rainbows". How can one like sunny weather. It cross 50 degree centigrade, the warm winds kill you and you are unable to do anything in the open at any point during the day until the seasons change. The idea of rains being sad or gloomy never made sense to me. My part of the world is made up of semi arid forets and sand dunes. North India has some of the worst environments. Rains cool things down. It is very common for people to go outside in the rain and its seen as a normal thing. 500 mm per year in the span of 6-8 weeks is not a lot of rain. Beyond the weather, the farming unfotunately is dependent on the rains and since there are no outdors here, you only see any form of green for two weeks post the rains end.

It started raining in the thid week of June here, we had showers today and the weather is nice. I can sit outside and soak in somewhat cleaner air. Apparently due to climate change, the rainy season in India is now slowly changing. The noth west has never been a place that got a lot of rain, with Rajasthan being home to Thar Desert. When I was in Chiang Mai last year, I noticed that the one month long rainy season in my city a lot longer than I expected. This was not a one off. Climate change has apparently, allegedly led to a shift in wind patterns, which means that the Thar desert might contract for real. Jaipur last year recieved more than twice its average rainfall.

This also means plenty of bad things. India, a place that lacks water, has floods each and every year. The roads are all jammed up as the drainage here is non existant. Mosquitos are everywhere so you would be wise to wear trousers and shirts 24/7 to avoid fatal infections. The internet is all shaky, most people, shops and e commerce stores have no clue what raincoats look like. Even during a time when people get to escape the extreme harshness of their environemnts, India finds a way of neutering it.

Which brings me to my real question. What is ideal weather like where you are from? Tyler Cowen talks about the distance from the equator being an important factor a civilization. Lee Kuan Yew called air condtioning a miracle as working productively in South Asian heat was pretty much impossible for most people. Hell, even Digital Nomading pioneer Pieter Levels loved Bali a lot because it had cheap wifii and aircon in most cafes where he would work in.

I have seen people post about Fall, some even like the snow. What times of the year do you like the most weather wise. I prefer spring but the wall of text above was to help others gauge why the subcontinent in particular has a lot of affection for the rains.

What is ideal weather like where you are from?

Scattered clouds, 15°C and intermittent light breeze is the perfect weather. Not hot enough to sweat when walking, not cold enough to need a jacket, just perfect.

15 is jacket weather. I like 30-35 degrees as it's not too hot. 45 and up is unbearable.

30 degrees is heat wave where the elderly and sick start dying. 35 is close to record temperature (and would be a new record if it happened in June or August). Most apartments don’t have real air conditioning.

Yeah, I live in Finland.

Living on the top floor of an apartment building I've come to appreciate heat waves intimately. The building is well insulated and barely needs heating if it's >10°C, but the roof volume is not ventilated at all, so during heat waves, that whole part of the building accumulates heat and temperature in my apartment gets to slightly above shade temperature and barely dips during the night.

I am now wondering if 2 months of slightly uncomfortable temperatures (27-29°C) and, on average, one week of really uncomfortable (32-38°C) are worth installing AC.

Or how much difference ventilating the building roof thoroughly could do. A single 100W fan would exchange all the air in the attic twice in an hour. That should be vastly cheaper than AC and depending on how much it'd cut the need for AC, neighbors might even help with funding that.

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