“I want to move somewhere sunnier” is one of the most common relocation motivations, and also one of the most under-researched — people frequently move based on a vacation impression of a place rather than genuine year-round climate data, and end up surprised by a season they never experienced as a visitor.
A pleasant 70°F annual average can be built from a genuinely brutal summer and a cold winter that just happen to average out — or from a place that’s mild nearly year-round. The average alone can’t tell you which. Always check the monthly breakdown, specifically the extreme months (typically July/August and December/January in most climates), not just the yearly number.
Two cities can share an identical average temperature and feel completely different to live in day-to-day, purely because of humidity — see the earlier piece on dew point for why. If you’re moving from a dry climate to a humid one (or vice versa), the “same” temperature number will not translate to the same lived experience, and this is one of the most common relocation regrets people report.
Annual rainfall total can be misleading on its own — a place that gets most of its rain in a handful of intense storms feels very different to live in than a place with the same total spread across many overcast, drizzly days. If you value sunny days specifically, look for average sunshine hours or clear-sky days per month, a genuinely different (and more relevant) metric than rainfall totals.
Annual averages describe a whole year you’ll never actually experience as a single day. Live with the monthly breakdown before you commit to a move based on it.
This is the single biggest trap: a great vacation in April tells you almost nothing reliable about what August or January is actually like there. If a genuine relocation is on the table, look up (or ask locals about) the specific months you didn’t experience firsthand — that’s precisely the gap a vacation impression can’t fill.
Don’t relocate based on a single visit’s weather or a flattering annual average — pull the actual monthly climate data, check humidity alongside temperature, and look at sunny-day counts rather than just rainfall totals. The season you’re moving away from is easy to research; the season you haven’t experienced yet is the one that actually needs it.