Special Request: Find a Low Cost Area with Moderate Weather and Near Trees
"My husband and I want to find a more affordable area with a change in seasons but not too much snow, and be near forested areas. Can you help us?"
We will find your dream locale by using each condition you noted as a filter. First, select counties with lower Housing Costs, then look at Heating Degree Days and Cooling Degree Days, and lastly at Forest Cover.
Cost of Living
Living costs are largely driven by food, energy, and housing. In any region, food expenses and energy unit costs tend to be consistent, so we will focus on housing cost.
The primary components of housing cost are mortgage and property taxes, so we'll create an index of those expanses by county across the state of California. That way we can easily see which areas are relatively more affordable.
Climate Conditions
As a surrogate for climatic conditions, we'll use Heating and Cooling Degree Days. In addition to being indicative of the weather, it has the benefit of providing insight into energy costs.
(About “Degree Days”: Take the high and low temperature for the day, and average them. If this number is greater than 65 F, then we have (Average temperature - 65) cooling degree days. If the average temperature is less than 65 degrees, then we have (65 - Average temperature) heating degree days. Running totals are kept for these units over a time period of a year so fuel distributors and power companies can assess average demands.)
We'll look for areas in the middle of the range.
Forestation
For this part of our search, we'll use a forest cover map.
Putting It All Together
The recommended search area for their dream locale.
Find Best Places to Live in California. Compare Cities in California. Compare Cost of living in California. Demographic data California. Relocation Advice California. Relocation information. Best states to live. Cost of living states. Sources: 2000 U.S. Census data.
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