For a senior nomad climate is always a factor. Climate affects all your travels in the biggest way possible. It can make the difference between basking-in-the-sun by the pool and being trapped inside for days on end, looking out at a torrential downpour. I’m not talking about simply looking up today’s weather report.

Anyone wishing to travel the world in a more nomadic lifestyle must understand the overall climate pattern of a location and how it regularly changes over the course of a year. Climate is often the single most important consideration of retired nomads. They travel the world following their favorite climates as they wax and wane around the globe.

In addition, the annual climate pattern of a location is almost always directly correlated with peak, shoulder or off season demand. And this translates into a huge cost difference depending on what time of the year you visit. Will you have money left over at the end of the month? Or will it cost your entire monthly budget to stay only a week in high season? For seniors traveling on a budget this is especially important.

Of course you can do an internet search on “best time to visit” and the name of the city/country you want to know about. But even then you’ll only get a general idea. The sites are quite varied in the way they present the data, and often the information is rudimentary.

And consider this… What if you don’t even know where you want to go? Then what you really need is help finding the locations that match the climate you know you love!

Fortunately, I’ve discovered some really excellent online resources that will help you. You’ll be able to:

• find cities based on temperatures, rainfall and other parameters
• find cities that have a climate similar to another place that you know you like
• review more climate details than you can imagine on any given city

Weather Similarity

http://www.codeminders.com/weather_similarity/

Honestly, this website is sooo very much fun. Simply zoom in the map and click on any little red dot representing a city that has a climate you know you like. Instantly, you’ll see a panel on the left with the names of all the cities around the globe that match that climate, along with the percentage indicating how close of a match.

Zoom back out and you’ll now see the little green dots of all cities that match. Move the similarity slider to the right to include more cities, those matching by a lesser percentage.

Be sure to check the “Shift months” tick box. This enables the software to match climates that are similar overall, but at different times of year. For example, say I love Santa Barbara, California. I select it and discover a city in Spain that’s similar. But nowhere else. Then check the Shift box. Cities in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa suddenly appear. They really do have the same climate, just with summer/winter reversed.

This site has already been very useful for me. I clicked on a city in Colombia whose climate I adore. I instantly discovered two cities in Peru and one in Mexico with the exact same climate. So they’re now on my “must see” list for future explorations.

Climate Finder

http://climatefinder.com

This site enables you to locate all places with the climate you like even if you don’t know of a single city that has what you’re looking for. On the home page there’s a box for each month. Click and it expands to a list of general climates to choose from. Hot & sunny, warm & pleasant, cool & comfortable or snowy and sunny. Click again and get a zoomable map with little dots showing all the cities that match. This is by far the simplest and fastest senior nomad climate finder around. I love it.

But what if their idea of “warm & pleasant” isn’t the same as yours? No problem. Click on “tweak criteria” and change it to exactly what you want. Their advanced search box gives you slider controls for all important climate attributes. You can even check boxes for additional months in case you want the same weather for longer.

Restrain yourself though. You can easily make your requirements so stringent that no city on earth matches. My advice is to stick with the month-by-month boxes. And if you must tweak, do it ever so slightly. You’ll find plenty of results that could keep you happy for years, exploring the world as a retired nomad.

WeatherSpark

https://weatherspark.com/

This site provides massive amounts of climate data. So it’s very useful to have in your senior nomad climate exploration toolbox. I personally use it often. But my advice is to save it for last after you’ve already narrowed your world travel choices down to a handful of cities. Then check the climate details for only those. Otherwise the sheer volume of data provided can be a bit overwhelming.

It’s easy to find cities (by name or map), and the graphics are beautifully designed for maximum comprehension. The designers really knew what they were doing when they built this. They figured out how to present the data so it’s super easy to understand. For example, the average hourly temperature chart displays color coded blobs labelled Sweltering, Hot, Warm, Comfortable, Cool, Cold, Freezing, etc.

You can display data for the whole year, or for just one month. They show temperature ranges, humidity, rainfall, cloud cover, hours of sunlight, best time to visit and much more. Even such esoteric things as wind speed/direction and amount of solar energy. Near the bottom of the page they show some topographic data, giving you elevation of the city plus the topography and vegetation within a 2-mile radius. It is literally jam packed with more than you’re ever going to want to know about the climate of a particular location.

It can look overwhelming when you first look at the page. But here’s what I suggest… first look at your own city, where you live now. Scroll down the page to familiarize yourself with the graphics and see how that represents what you are already familiar with. It will then start to make a lot more sense to you.

Then pick out just a few of the charts that are really important to you when evaluating a location. For me it’s the charts on temperature, rainfall and humidity. When I’m looking at a city, I scroll down to those and stop. I may glance at the best-time-to-visit, but not necessarily.

Even for me, an admitted “data junkie”, this website is like drinking from a fire hose. Go easy.