r/geography Geography Enthusiast 26d ago

Why aren't there any large cities in this area? Discussion

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u/zakress 26d ago

100+° in summer and -20° in winter isn’t helping desirability any

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u/FFunSize 26d ago

laughs in Montreal

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u/Torb_11 26d ago edited 25d ago

it's colder in a lot of that area than montreal.

edit: I actually looked it up some of the major cities in that area and im wrong montreal is generally a bit colder but not as hot

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u/ButtGrowper 26d ago

In Minnesota, we see Montreal’s record low temperature, -36°F multiple times per winter. Sometimes a week straight.

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u/magic_crouton 26d ago

Few years ago we spent almost all of January well below zero for highs.

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u/The_Granny_banger 26d ago

*nods in Chicago, but still says fuck Minnesota

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u/Intrepid_Passage_692 26d ago

We saw that in Nebraska for 2 days last year. It was 125 for a week and a half 😭

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u/jus10beare 26d ago

And hotter in the summer. Montreal is a paradise compared to much of this area.

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u/tomdawg0022 26d ago

Drier heat, if you will. Montreal can get stinky humid at times in the summer.

(Been out in Montana and the Dakotas in June & July when it was 90+ but the humidity was low so it didn't feel bad at all as long as you had some level of breeze. Nights were super comfy in the summer.)

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u/perpetualmotionmachi 26d ago

It gets quite hot and humid in Montreal summers. Back in 2018 we had a heatwave with over 60 deaths.

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u/DifferentSurvey2872 25d ago

I just checked Billings Montana weather averages and it’s surprisingly not that cold in the winter ?? Also it has daytime summer high’s similar to Atlanta. Any explanation to this ???

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u/Sheerbucket 25d ago

It has a lot more water including the St Lawrence seaway .....that means ports and industry

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u/DifferentSurvey2872 25d ago

the Dakotas, Minnesota, parts of Montana and Wyoming way colder actually

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u/Torb_11 25d ago

Avg Jan , July high/low (C)

Sioux Falls, SD -3° / -14° , 30° / 17°

Montreal QC -4° / -11° , 27° / 18°

Billings MT 4° / -9 , 32° / 14°

Cheyenne, WY 4° / -8° , 29° / 13°

So I guess it depends

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u/DifferentSurvey2872 25d ago

That’s why I said parts, Compare it to Fargo and Minneapolis now

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u/ForestWhisker 26d ago

It gets down into the -50f (-45c) range semi regularly. Montana had the lowest temp recorded in the lower 48 at -70f (-56c) which beats Montreal’s record cold which was -36f (-37.8c). When I worked in ND it would stay in the -30f to -40f degree range for weeks at a time and with windchill would get down into the -60f range. But also all those areas can get above 100f in the summer North Dakota having a record of 121f and Montana’s record at 117f while it’s never broken 100f in Montreal.

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u/Lets-B-Lets-B-Jolly 26d ago

As a 4th generation Texan, these Temps are literally my nightmare.

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u/SparkyDogPants 26d ago

If it makes you feel better, cold state architecture is built around cold weather instead of whatever the fuck Texas infrastructure is meant to do. But I would rather be in -50 in Montana than 20 in Texas.

Having lived in both

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u/kyleW_ne 25d ago

Having lived similarly, -35f in Nebraska is well handled compared to 30f in Texas. Light ice shuts everything down in Texas...

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u/SparkyDogPants 25d ago

And the housing isn’t built to keep you warm. It’s so much colder in Texas at 20-30 than 70 degrees colder somewhere else. And

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u/maneki_neko89 26d ago

Yep, that sounds like home (I was born and raised in West Central Minnesota on the edge of the vast Dakota flatlands with no way to stop the Canadian Arctic Blast from flash freezing me during the winter)

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u/Sheerbucket 25d ago

Except that was on a mountain pass not in the areas people live.....growing up near Montreal and living in Montana, it's more the Wind and dry desolation that makes it undesirable, not necessarily the cold. Wind though.....

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u/DifferentSurvey2872 25d ago

definitely been above 100f in Montreal

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u/rollaogden 26d ago

Winnipeg is right north of this circle.

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u/jshamwow 26d ago

Is Montreal hot? I visited in August and thought it was delightful. Maybe I just chose a good week

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u/eVilCorporationz 22d ago

They are one of those people who think everything is the worst in their city. Anyone who says Montreal has hot summers is living in a frozen bubble.

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u/SQLvultureskattaurus 26d ago

Less car theft

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u/Over-Wrangler-3917 23d ago

The wind coming through that area makes it much colder than the winter. Of course it's even colder in other parts of Canada that aren't Montreal. Like Saskatchewan, directly north of this. And barely anybody lives there either.

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u/SigilumSanctum 26d ago

Yeah fuck that noise. Perfectly happy here in the Carolinas.

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u/sfxer001 26d ago

Carolina’s = sticky crickets

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u/tuckedfexas 26d ago

I’d rather work in our 110 we get here in the high desert than yalls 85 lol. Humidity just feels wrk g

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u/goodsam2 26d ago edited 26d ago

Low temperatures are not that low actually in the Piedmont region. Up in the mountains its a lot cooler. Raleigh gets 6 inches of snow per year on average and the average low barely gets below freezing.

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u/pepinyourstep29 26d ago

The Carolinas not really humid at all unless you go near the coast

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u/tuckedfexas 26d ago

Only been on the coast, shits miserable lol

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u/pepinyourstep29 26d ago

Yea it's basically diet Florida if you go there lol

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u/tuckedfexas 26d ago

Yea I can’t do Florida, been there too many times and there’s just no point in showering lol

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u/Vegtabletray 26d ago

North Carolina has a wide variety of geography, but I would describe most areas as at least "kinda humid". South Carolina has a lot of swamp and swamp-ish areas even a good bit inland, and it's all awful.

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u/pepinyourstep29 26d ago

The mountainside parts are pretty great. Gets actually too dry sometimes lol

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u/MrTheWaffleKing 26d ago

Moved to Florida and I miss summer being “normal”. At least there’s only like 2 weeks of winter though

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u/runfayfun 26d ago

Plenty of major cities get that kind of weather though

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u/EvilDarkCow 26d ago

You just described Wichita and almost 400k people live here.

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u/Fluffy_Town 26d ago

...and there's a lot of dryness since there are no major waterbodies in that area. Chicago is along the Great Lakes, NYC is in NY harbor, San Fran is in the Bay area, LA is along the coast, Seattle is located in a Bay along a Sound, a lot of the major FL cities are along the coast, outside of Disney which is build on a swamp, even Salt Lake City is built near a dry lake bed that fills when the Pacific has hurricanes/cyclones that redirect water into CA and the Great Basin away from the PNW.

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u/Chasethemac 26d ago

115+f and -40f you mean.

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u/Christophergruenwald 26d ago

Try -35F in winter some days. At least my area.

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u/yerfdog1935 26d ago

Yep. And in a lot of places in that area it's a very humid 100+ in the summer.

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u/songoukisama 26d ago

It gets colder than that, haha.

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u/goinupthegranby 26d ago

When I went to Bozeman it was 0F in the middle of the day. The wind helps cut that cold right into your bones though so there's that too.

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u/666Needle-Dick 26d ago

This was my thought. Here in AB it's like 95+° and -40° (maybe more like -60° in northern AB). Much more desirable.

I have a feeling it gets much colder than -20 there.

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u/mercyspace27 26d ago

Lived in North Dakota for four years and I can confidently say that The Plains in the US is the most deceptively brutal place I’ve ever been in. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, I thought I knew misery. Granted the humidity is nothing, but the hottest I ever saw it get was 115 Fahrenheit. Coldest I ever saw it get was -55 Fahrenheit WITHOUT wind chill. Believe WITH wind chill it was estimated to be about -75 Fahrenheit.

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u/666Needle-Dick 26d ago

That's what I figured. It gets cold as fuck in Sask and Manitoba. But that biting wind makes it so much damn worse. I couldn't see it being much different in ND or Minnesota. But I've never been to either state.

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u/mercyspace27 26d ago

If memory serves ND tends to be a bit colder but generally the two are pretty close. I believe ND gets a bit colder from wind chill because it’s flatter.