Every State, Ranked by How Miserable Its Winters Are

In most of America, winter sucks. It is cold out. You don’t feel like doing anything, so you get fat. Pipes freeze. Lips, noses, and cheeks get chapped and raw. Black ice kills. Polar vortex enters the lexicon. Snow hats look cool until you have to take them off indoors and then your hair looks shitty. It’s horrible.

But which state is the MOST horrible? After an intense period of research and debate with my friends and colleagues, factoring in everything from weather patterns and average temperatures to the efficacy with which state governments keep roads clear to the historical success rates of their winter-season sports teams, these are the results. This is one of those things where you probably actually want to finish last.

50. Hawaii

Aloha means hello, goodbye, and “who cares about pro sports teams when the average temperature during the winter is 81 and we’re all over here eating malasadas and making fun of you stupid cold haoles.” It IS kinda windy though?

49. Arizona

Occasionally, retired Kroger business executives from Ohio and their Pilates-instructor second wives will accidentally move to Flagstaff and get very sad and angry when they realize the average winter temperature is somewhere in the 20s. But most of Arizona offers up that dry desert day heat that is good for arthritis and any lingering guilt about leaving their first wives to deal with their delinquent teenage kids back in Indian Hill.

48. California

There is no generalizing about the climate of a state the size of Italy, except to say that SF’s weather rarely changes except during the weird time during the summer when it becomes winter and everyone misquotes Mark Twain; everyone in LA and San Diego just wear bikinis and surf to work year-round (except during Sharknado season) and they don’t have meteorologists in Fresno, so no one knows what happens there during any season, much less ONE of them, but it seems like it can't be that bad.

47. Colorado

Yes, this seems like an odd placement for a state that clearly experiences some serious snowfall, but the thing is, snowfall is a cause for celebration here. Have you ever been to Colorado in wintertime? The sun is shining, the winter sports are world class, and if people aren’t (legally) high as balls, then they’re getting into some fantastic beer. The Broncos are even good for a Super Bowl with a decent amount of regularity. Colorado has basically solved winter.

46. Florida

Seeing how it’s mostly a humid subtropical state filled with the type of people who unironically adorn their cars with statement bumper stickers and don’t blink for long periods of time, Florida’s winters tend to be mild, as if actively trying not to make any sudden moves lest their population get nervous and start throwing alligators.

45. New Mexico

Did you know that New Mexico is basically Colorado? And I don’t mean that as in they both tend to attract spiritually earnest people who value physical fitness and have weirdly nice calves and prefer to be outdoors wearing shawls with Native American symbols on them (though that is also true). I mean, in the sense of topography, New Mexico and Colorado both have high plains, mountain ranges, deserts, basins, and affiliations to green chile.

And though New Mexico gets warmer during the day, you can still see why people from these two states tend to live charmed winter lives/dislike each other, even as you struggle to tell them apart.

44. Louisiana

You think they’d have Mardi Gras in February (or early March) if that wasn’t an ideal time for a party?!?!! Wait -- what do you mean “it’s set by the church calendar to always fall the day before Ash Wednesday?” Well, you think they would’ve petitioned the pope for a change by now if that humid subtropical climate didn’t laissez les bon temps rouler?!? Yeah, I have no idea either, I guess. Point is, Louisiana is a decent state when it comes to dealing with the colder months, even when the memory of a historically bad pass interference call lingers.

43. Texas

According to a quick eyeballing of the globe I keep in my office, Texas is roughly the size of South America or something, and you can’t speak on the weather in Ecuador like it’s the same as Chile, right? West Texas is mostly arid desert where you can get the occasional blizzard that shuts down Amarillo, forcing their lauded indoor football team the Venom, to postpone games. East Texas is subtropical and humid even in the winter, and they get that cool advection fog in Galveston where you can’t see shit for days, and all of the ships carrying giant Texas belt buckles to Mexico are forced to stay put.

Sure, once in a while it will snow 4 inches in Dallas and people will be talking about killing their horses and sleeping inside of them Tauntaun style. With all that said, outside of the Northern Plains, the average temps in Texas in the winter usually stay in the mid-60s during the day, and that’s pretty damn nice.

42. Georgia

Psychologically it seems like Georgia should be safely out of the winter pain zone, and often that holds true, but freezing rain’s nothing to mess with, tornadoes somehow continue to be a thing even in February, and when snow does hit, no city does “wow, we were woefully underprepared for this” quite like Atlanta.

41. Alabama

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