Why the Northeast Sucks at Air Conditioning (And Other Cool Facts)

Using data to explain why some parts of the US are less cool than others.

I currently live in New England, but I am not from New England. There’s a lot of things I find strange and inexplicable about the Frozen Northeast, but way up there at the top of the list? Almost no one has central air conditioning.

I’ve long been annoyed by how terrible Boston’s air conditioning situation is, but I became really invested in the topic at the end of June, as Boston hit record highs and the Pacific Northwest and Canada were subject to impossibly heatwaves. As I watched my long-suffering partner wrestle a window air conditioning unit into our apartment (I am far too much of an idiot to do it), I started to wonder.

Why is it that homes in the Northeast and the Northwest rarely have central AC? What do these patterns look like geographically? And, most importantly, which cities and US regions will need to do a lot more work to ensure that people have access to air conditioning as the planet warms?

I decided to work out my air-conditioning related frustrations in the manner of snotty little pedants everywhere. I crunched some numbers from the American Housing Survey, then making a map. You can play with a digital version of the map here.