Score
Low Heat
Lower summer heat 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 Heat rewards places with fewer and less intense warm-weather heat signals.
- 1
Heat burden is a weighted log blend: 50% 90F days, 25% 100F days, and 25% cooling 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 heat 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 Heat.
What This Score Means
Low Heat rewards places with fewer and less intense warm-weather heat signals.
Statistics Feeding This Score
- Days above 90FSource: NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, annual/seasonal
Annual normal count of days with maximum temperature above 90F.
- Days above 100FSource: NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, annual/seasonal
Annual normal count of days with maximum temperature above 100F.
- Cooling degree daysSource: NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, annual/seasonal
Annual cooling degree days, scaled before inclusion in the heat 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 Heat.