Do you prefer your current climate or Melbourne's climate?

I think I'd take mine even though I like Melbourne's temperatures more. Melbourne is only variable during the wrong season (summer) and I'm not a fan of its precip pattern, and winter cold snaps are pretty lame.


Don't get me wrong, I don't mind summer variability. But winter can't be THAT stable compared to summer. That's a no-no for me.

Locales across the Channel from Heathrow are far from getting heat at the same frequency as Melbourne though!

When it comes to summer, the US has the key advantage of a hot body of water to the south and east, and a continent almost all the way to the pole. What does that yield? No source of cold. I would de-penis myself for the southern and SE US summers. 

Australia, meanwhile, has a vast expanse of world's coldest ocean to the south with no stops in between, and a lukewarm current to the east. What happens, you get a conga line of marching cold fronts and anticyclones, of which you'll regularly catch the wrong side and be spunked with a cornucopia of southerlies straight from a subantarctic ocean. And those anticyclones are more than happy to stall and deform, sending protracted periods of crummer southerlies northwards. And because the waters anywhere south of the tropic of capricorn are much, much cooler than the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulfstream, avg lows are comparatively pathetic, particularly in SE and southern Aus, even a good distance inland. 

97F in Melbourne today...

I'd pick Bangkok over Melbourne any day, but Melbourne really isn't that bad. It's just that almost everywhere else in Aus is better.

Certainly an achievement amongst the plethora of 65f days.

Wrong—you've got it entirely backwards for winter.

The cloud from prevailing westerly fronts and especially Northwest Cloudbands, actually gets backed-up against the northern (windward) side of the ranges; and thus, Melbourne instead receives warm and dry foehn winds, hence being so warm for its latitude compared to windward Victorian climates (annual mean difference of more than 2° C). Note also the dramatically different precip pattern in Melbourne; one of a summer peak, as opposed to a characteristically Victorian winter peak.

The reason why Melbourne is so stable in winter…is because it lacks those very cold days that characterise the regions windward of the ranges. Melbourne can only get truly cold days with S to SSW fronts, which are rare compared to the standard WSW to SW counterparts.

If I got a dollar for every time a cold front or south/SW airflow imported stratocrapulus during my time in Melbourne, I would be richer than AJ. At the end of the day, Melbourne is plagued by southerly stratocrapulus. That is infact one of the reasons why Melbourne is stable in winter, the lack of clear skies and coastal location means there are less extremes in temp. North of the ranges gets a greater frequency of clear skies exactly because the ranges help block the southerly cloud and being away from the moderating ocean ofcourse there is less temp stability. I know about NW cloud bands and what not, but still it is not incorrect that southerly cloud gets backed up by the ranges. Similar thing happens in Shitney when they get their summer SE'lies. 

^^^ Fair enough, yeah true that the Corryong/Albury/Wangaratta is cooler and cloudier than places at the same lat toward the west of the state.

Yeah Melbourne gets plenty of high level and mid level cloud in winter with NW cloudbands, but still the stratojunk from the S/SW is beyond common. That stratojunk however is usually dry or just brings some lame drizzle.