Probably my favorite show on television right now is USA Network's "Psych" (IMDB), starring James Roday and Dule Hill. The show is a comedy about an keenly-observant-but-not-really-psychic detective. It has a certain unique cheesy humor to it but somehow it works.

One of the episodes this season, "Cloudy, Chance of Murder" even involves a weatherman being murdered, and his nerdy meteorologist protege is a suspect.

(You might see this "Office" Psych wallpaper on the computer
next to me on the The J-CAM -- Note also the "clearance-
priced Valentine's Day candy" for the officemates)

I was skeptical when I first started watching the show (since I'm a little Monk-ish [JessePedia], another USA joint), but I absolutely fell in love with the characters, the writing, and especially the sunny, green, flower-filled Santa Barbara, California landscape -- until I found out it is filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Many (most?) movies and television shows (including "Men in Trees", the subject of a previous weather examination on this blog) are filmed in or near Vancouver due to its wide range of landscapes and inexpensive production costs. During the 1990's "The X-Files" (another favorite of mine) tried to convince us that they were in such locations from Florida to California while in fact the outside scenes were filmed almost entirely in B.C.

This intrigued me enough to research more in-depth the climate of the Vancouver area. The film is actually filmed in White Rock, (fans will recognize the pier and flowery landscape) which is about 30 miles to the south of Vancouver, but the only reliable climate station that I have access to is at the Vancouver airport.

Vancouver's climate is temperate because of its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. Average annual temperature ranges from a low of about 35 to a high of around 63. Their coldest day in January is, on average 31/41 for a low and high; in July they average 54/71.

To compare to my climate here in Central Pennsylvania, that means that their temperature range from Jan. to July is equivalent to ours from early March to early June -- I would describe this as chilly but not cold in the winter and cool (but nice) in the summer.

More important is the rainfall because most of it falls in the winter and the summers are nearly dry, providing for plenty of opportunities to shoot "Psych" in the beautiful weather they always seem to have on the show. The trick is that they have to film the show during the summer, roughly May 1 to Sep 1 I would guess, to avoid rain or cold temperatures that would spoil the Santa Barbara ruse. Their annual precipitation of 43 inches is not that different than here in Central Pennsylvania, but ours is spread out almost evenly throughout the year.

Had they actually filmed in Santa Barbara, they could film year-round if they were only concerned about temperature -- that city's average daily temperature ranges only from 55 to 70 all year around, but it has a similar dry summer and wet winter.

As far as scenery goes, Santa Barbara also has beautiful, flower-filled greenery and a similar beach & pier, but the big difference is palm trees, which are everywhere in Santa Barbara, but nowhere in Psych, except in outside panoramas.

To summarize, here are the averages:

Vancouver, BC:

Coldest Winter Low: 31
Warmest Summer High: 71

Santa Barbara, CA:

Coldest Winter Low: 39
Warmest Summer High: 79

State College, PA:

Coldest Winter Low: 17
Warmest Summer High: 81

Climate information for this page was obtained from U.S. "Typical Weather" on AccuWeather.com, U.S. daily average data from AccuWeather.com Premium and Canadian average data from AccuWeather.com Professional, and Our Forensics folks.

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