Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdouble | Hacker News Reader

Minneapolis "beautiful?" Portland "great weather?"

Can't tell if serious...

I was in Minneapolis in the spring a few years ago and it was a very attractive city. The winters are harsh and long, though. I actually mind it most in the fall, because I'm used to November still being somewhat warm (northeast's "Indian summer").

Portland, according to Wikipedia, has an average January high of 47, an average July high of 81-- some seasonality but not too much-- and with 40+ percent sunshine in most of the year, doesn't seem to have the overbearing cloudiness of Seattle's winters.

I lived in Minnesota for 20 years and just got back from Portland. I'd say Minneapolis is average-nice but not "beautiful." The Grand Rounds and city lakes are great. The actual city parts, however, are nothing special and I would argue are actually kind of ugly, especially in late winter and early spring when there's a layer of dirty ice crust covering everything.

Portland's weather is truly miserable during the winter and is rated #1 in the country for seasonal affective disorder. The summers, however are beautiful.

could be worse, you could live in England.

Let me tell you, I absolutely love the total shit of PDX -- it's amazing, walkable, great bike culture, great food/beer/coffee culture, good public transit, beautiful environment, an amazing DIY culture that permeates everything...

But the weather? Oh my god, the weather. The weather is horrible a good 6-9 months of the year. It's amazing for 3, but oh my god does it have a cloudy, wet, no-sun-ever feel for a good chunk of the year. Wikipedia might say one thing, but really, the weather... oh man the weather.

As somebody who currently lives in the Twin Cities I can vouch for both the upside and downside. So far this year the weather has been awful (we're about to get hit by a wintery mix for the next two days) but I think that's true for many places this year. The summers are shorter but beautiful. Spring and Autumn seem to be the shortest seasons. I personally love the Fall up here. Out-state weekends trips to the lakes are awesome as well.

When it comes to the cities themselves, just like anywhere else there are some spots that are better or more trendy than others. St. Paul is an older city but in a well maintained, charactery sort of way. Minneapolis is a small city, newer feeling, much cleaner than some of the bigger cities. Their are lots of small areas within each of the cities that are pretty popular. The suburbs are constantly being built out and are very convenient to the downtown areas.

There's a number of other great things about the area to help counterbalance the weather as well. The one thing that really gets me though is that NOBODY knows how to zipper-merge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com