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Climate in Massachusetts



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Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:08 pm
Charm says...



Hi.

I'm working on a novel and I decided to change the setting to inland Massachusetts. I'm guess closer to Worcester than Boston (the towns in my story are fictional). I want to know about the seasons because while I can get the temperatures with an easy google search it's hard to grasp what that feels like. What would people typically wear during the Massachusetts seasons? Is spring like jeans and a sweater? Is summer a t-shirt and a pair of shorts? That's what I'm interesting in knowing.
  





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Sun Jul 22, 2018 7:37 pm
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Rosendorn says...



When trying to determine climate, you can get a ballpark of what it's like by taking in a few factors:

- Humidity. This is a big one, because a humidex value of 94% at 25C will likely feel worse than humidity of 30% at 29C. Humidity goes up in valleys, near water, and when there isn't much wind.

- Speaking of wind, the direction of the wind and what winds can blow plays a huge part in weather. The Midwest gets so cold because it has arctic air blowing straight into the region without any major mountain ranges to stop it. Winds that blow over water tend to be cooler, ironically, than winds that don't.

- General geography also plays a huge part. Living in the rain shadow of a mountain renders the place dryer, while being on the rainy side of a mountain renders it humid (inland BC has rainforests, for example, because ocean air blowing against mountains equals lots and lots of wet).

- Hours of sunlight and UV index. A place that gets a lot of weak sun will be colder than a place that might only get 12~ hours of sun, but it's much stronger. This is determined by how close to a poll a place is; the more equal the day/nights, the stronger the sun will be just because it's more direct.

- The season and distance from the equator. Seasons physically correlate to how intense the sunlight on an area is (winter= tilted away from sun); how far from the equator it is determines the intensity of that fluctuation (poles will go nearly 24 hours dark and 24 hours light depending on season). A spring 15C will feel cooler than a summer 15C, just because in the summer there is more intense sunlight than during the spring.

- Historical weather trends. If for the past 25 years, 15C has been the spring weather (spring= a lot of clouds, weaker sunlight), and they're used to -20C in the winter but 25C in the summer, then it'll probably be light jacket weather. But in a place where 15C is summer weather (strongest sunlight, longest days) and -40C is the winter, then it'll probably be t-shirt and pants weather.

Historical weather trends also gives you an idea of what buildings are like; heat waves are so dangerous in the UK because they plain old don't have air conditioning and buildings are meant to retain heat.
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