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Mapping

Map shows where to find your perfect weather, all year long

Whether you like it hot, cold, or just right, the Perpetual Temperature map can help you plan your travels accordingly
  • Jul 12, 2016
  • 350 words
  • 2 minutes
Child jumping into Skaha Lake, British Columbia Expand Image
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With the dog days of summer upon us, many Canadians are wistfully anticipating September and a return to more comfortable temperatures. But what if we weren’t beholden to seasons for a change of weather?

Enter Perpetual Temperature, an interactive map that plots out a yearlong, globe-spanning travel itinerary guided by your personal definition of the perfect weather.

Created by an American software developer, Chris Reade, during a Hackathon in 2013, the map defaults to a monthly mean temperature of 72F (22C), which some medical experts have suggested is the ideal ambient temperature for the human body. If this indeed sounds appealing, the map recommends you spend the rest of July in Calistoga, California, then head to Kassler, Colorado in August, and while away autumn in Florida and Texas, finally finishing off the year in Hawaii.

If you prefer hot weather (say, 32C/90F) and are dreading summer’s end, simply adjust the slider and start booking flights to Puerto Rico for October and Palau for November. Or, perhaps you’d like to experience a year of 0C (32F), in which case you’d best head to Thredbo, Australia next week (pack your skis) and research how to ring in the New Year in Big Bow, Kansas.

Reade came up with the idea for the Perpetual Temperature map while working in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“I came out of my apartment one morning and realized that the southern hemisphere winter was wonderful and started to think if and how I could rig my work assignments to always live at same level of comfort,” he explains.

Reade acknowledges that the map tends to come up with unreasonable itineraries — “You’d have to be pretty dedicated to a temperature to criss-cross the globe like it has you do” — but that in theory a person could use it as a reference to plan their perfect getaway.

As for Reade’s perfect temperature?

“I think Johannesburg was in the high 50s/low 60s [around 15C] that morning,” he says. “I’d be in perpetual autumn if I could.” 

The Perpetual Temperature map by Chris Reade Expand Image
The Perpetual Temperature map by Chris Reade. 
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