Score
Low Cold
Lower winter cold burden scores higher using NOAA 1991-2020 climate normals.
Higher values rank better for this score.
How It's Calculated
The latest published score is normalized to a 0-100 scale. The method below explains what the score rewards, with technical source metadata available for audit.
How the ranking is built
Low Cold rewards places with fewer and less intense winter cold signals.
- 1
Cold burden is a weighted log blend: 55% freezing days, 15% subzero days, and 30% heating degree days.
- 2
The burden is confidence-shrunk when station evidence is weaker.
- 3
The score is inverse percentile-rank normalized over the full scored distribution, so lower cold burden scores higher.
Technical details
Read from the current master score table for this criterion.
The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Low Cold.
What This Score Means
Low Cold rewards places with fewer and less intense winter cold signals.
Statistics Feeding This Score
- Freezing daysSource: NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, annual/seasonal
Annual normal count of days with minimum temperature below 32F.
- Subzero daysSource: NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, annual/seasonal
Annual normal count of days with minimum temperature below 0F.
- Heating degree daysSource: NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, annual/seasonal
Annual heating degree days, scaled before inclusion in the cold burden.
- Station match confidenceSource: Derived from NOAA station matches
Derived from station count, distance, and elevation fit for the place.
Source Data
Known Limits
- Station normals are proxies for places; they are not gridded averages for exact municipal boundaries.
- Nearby stations are weighted by distance and elevation fit, then lower-confidence estimates are shrunk toward the all-place mean.
- Microclimates, shade, wind, wildfire smoke, and local siting effects can differ from the station-based estimate.
Top 10 Locations
Ranked by Low Cold.