<p>Ilisagvik College in Barrow, Alaska …</p>
<p>Boston may seem cold but compared to NY state it’s not. Boston seldom falls below 30F for very long (of course there are cold spells)Colleges in Maine, VT will be colder (think 0 F) and have more snow. Colleges near the Adirondacks and near the lake in NY are cold, and there is constant lake effect snow - Syracuse always has snow, Rochester gets a lot.</p>
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<p>Buffalo actually doesn’t get that much snow when compared to other cities in NY. </p>
<p>Anyways, here’s the real reason I revived this thread (sorry!)-</p>
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<p>Where in NY did you live? I lived in Watertown for 4 years before moving down to NC.</p>
<p>Chicago weather is wacky.</p>
<p>UAA (University of Alaska, Anchorage)</p>
<p>I still haven’t really thought about how this will affect me- I think 50 degrees Farenheit is cold…</p>
<p>IMHO the little niche school in Barrow takes it, with Alaska-Fairbanks (MUCH colder than Anchorage) a close second…</p>
<p>Syracuse, most definitely!</p>
<p>Data from <a href=“http://www.wordclimate.com%5B/url%5D”>www.wordclimate.com</a> seem to agree with dudedad.</p>
<p>/Disappointed UQAC wasn’t contender</p>
<p>Here in Minnesota. it was -50F last year for a good week or so. just try to beat that, new york state! haha</p>
<p>If you don’t regularly have to plug your car’s block heater in every night to ensure that the engine ACTUALLY starts in the morning, you’re not cold enough :)</p>
<p>Even Chicago by the lake gets freezing.</p>
<p>I have to say that Maine has been the coldest place I have ever been.</p>
<p>If you want to know what the average temperatures at a school actually are, instead of listening to random opinions from people who have never been there or think that anything below 60F is freezing, do yourself a favor and go to</p>
<p>[National</a> and Local Weather Forecast, Hurricane, Radar and Report](<a href=“http://www.weather.com%5DNational”>http://www.weather.com)</p>
<p>Search on the name of the city. If you click on the “10-day” forecast, and then scroll down you’ll find an “averages” button in the lower right. That will display a graph that shows the average daily highs and lows for every month, and a similar graph showing precipitation.</p>
<p>You will find that Williamstown, Massachusetts [Williams] is perhaps 2F colder than Brunswick, ME [Bowdoin], while Waterville, ME [Colby] is about a degree hotter in the summer and colder in the winter on average, with all having a similar amount of precipitation. (It’s a combination of proximity to the ocean and altitude.) Minneapolis [Macalester] is hotter in the summer and colder in the winter, with less precipitation.</p>
<p>Facts. The internet is a wonderful thing</p>
<p>As a life long resident of Michigan, I’ll say anywhere in Michigan. Although if you wan’t more options just about anywhere in the midwest or what other call " fly over country " ( and I don’t think they mean it in a good way ) although it doesnt bother me since I think it’s the best region.</p>
<p>One very straightforward to compare climates of different schools: just punch in the zip code at the Arbor Day Foundation’s [“Hardiness</a> Zone”](<a href=“http://www.arborday.org/treeinfo/zonelookup.cfm]"Hardiness”>http://www.arborday.org/treeinfo/zonelookup.cfm) website. Technically, “hardiness” refers to the difficulty of growing plants, but this is a useful proxy for the rigor of the climate as perceived by college students. </p>
<p>Here, for example, are the “hardiness” ratings for prominent schools in New England (lower numbers = more hardiness required for survival):</p>
<p>4-5 Middlebury, Dartmouth
5 Williams
5-6 Bowdown, Bates, Colby, Holy Cross
6 Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Trinity, Wesleyan
6-7 Harvard, MIT, Brown, Connecticut College
7 Yale</p>
<p>I would like to correct a misconception stated by a previous poster regarding the cold in Colorado. Certain areas in the mountains, which make up less than half of the land mass of the state, are freezing during certain times of the year. This is not where the population centers are (eg. Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs). The average temperatures in the front range are in the 40’s in the coldest months and we get an average of 300 days of sunshine a year. Snow sits on the ground for no more than a couple of days and we get so little precipitation that snow is a rare event anyway.
[Denver</a>, Colorado Weather Forecast / Climate / Average Temperatures](<a href=“http://www.go-colorado.com/Denver/Weather/]Denver”>http://www.go-colorado.com/Denver/Weather/)</p>
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<p>The most severe hardiness rating for a univerity in New England are probably:
3-4 University of Maine at Presque Isle</p>
<p>The most severe for hardiness ratings for a university in the 48 states may be:
3 Bemidji State University (Minnesota)</p>
<p>Although if we include 2-year schools, then there is also:
2-3 Vermillion Community College (Minnesota)</p>
<p>Average January temperature, selected cities (degrees Fahrenheit):</p>
<p>Fairbanks, AK -9.8
Fargo ND 6.8
Bismarck ND 10.2
Minneapolis-St. Paul 13.1
Sioux Falls, SD 14.0
Anchorage AK 15.8
Madison WI 17.3
Burlington VT 18.0
Concord NH 20.1
Helena MT 20.2
Des Moines IA 20.4
Milwaukee 20.7
Omaha 21.7
Portland ME 21.7
Chicago 22.0
Albany NY 22.2
Buffalo NY 24.5
Detroit 24.5
Cleveland 25.7
Hartford CT 25.7
Juneau AK 25.7
Cheyenne WY 25.9
Indianapolis 26.5
Pittsburgh 27.5
Kansas City 26.9
Spokane WA 27.3
Columbus OH 28.3
Providence 28.7
Denver 29.2
Salt Lake City 29.2
Boston 29.3
St. Louis 29.6
Boise ID 30.2
New York City 32.1
Philadelphia 32.3
Baltimore 32.3
Washington DC 34.9</p>
<p>Conclusion: if you don’t like winter cold—say anything colder than Juneau, Alaska—then you should avoid the northern Rockies, the northern Great Plains, the Great Lakes region, upstate New York, interior New England, and coastal New England north of Boston.</p>
<p>I live in Minnesota, where the temperate plunges to -50 a couple weeks a year. I delivered papers at 3 AM for ten years, so I consider myself pretty "hardy."c</p>
<p>One of my coworkers is from Texas. He regularly wears a turtleneck when my friends wear shorts.</p>
<p>Minnesota is beautiful during the summer and fall though!</p>
<p>This thread is great! We live in Western PA, and D (a Jr) wants a cold school. Buffalo and MI State were on her radar, but she also has been investigating Alaska and Maine-Orono. This thread is going to give her more ideas. Yeah, she’s weird…personally, I’d choose to go to a FL school…</p>