How much do you like the weather where you live? According to a new YouGov survey, opinion on the subject is—appropriate to a country with so many different climates—quite split.
We first asked respondents, “How important was the weather for you in choosing where to live?” 21% of respondents said the weather was “very important”, 34% said the weather was “somewhat important” and 39% said the weather was “not important at all”. How respondents answered was tied to the region where they lived. The West was the region where the most respondents rated the weather as important for them, while the Midwest was the region with the least respondents rating the weather as important.
If given the chance to move to a region with better weather, our respondents also gave a range of responses. 18% of respondents said they would definitely move to a region with better weather if there were no other considerations and 27% said they probably would move. On the other side things, 19% said they would probably not move and 7% said they would definitely not move. 21% replied “I like the weather where I live now”. As may be expected, responses varied by region. Again the West and the Midwest were the two extremes. Those in the former were most the likely to want to stay put, while those in the latter were the most eager to skip town.
People may have different opinions about the weather in the place where they live, but a majority across the country agree on what constitutes good weather. When asked what their favorite kind of weather was, 59% of respondents said “mild and sunny”. No other kind of weather was nearly as favored as this one and the second most popular option, “hot and dry”, was selected by only 11% of respondents. Various forms of cold, snowy, foggy, or rainy weather all ranked low and hot and humid weather was the least popular.
Younger respondents, in an interesting twist on the generational divide, were less likely to select sunny weather than their older peers. Only 40% of respondents 18-34 years-old choose “mild and sunny”, while 63% of those 35-54 year-old and 69% of those 55 and above rated it as their favorite kind of weather.
