MeteoSwiss provides sunshine reports for some Swiss cities here:
I've checked several threads where people recommend living in places like Einsiedeln or Bilten but is there a town or a region which is less affected by the fog and still within Zurich commute?
How long do you want to travel? I commuted for 2 years (it was less than an hour each way by car, not 2 years!) from Baselland to Zürich.
Lots of places. For one, try the Bonstetten area.
You have the figures, so make your choice. Obviously avoid living near lakes and rivers.
A Basel man told me a week ago that Basel is a very sunny place, which just isn't true at all. Only Zurich and St Gallen have a little less sun than Basel. So you really need to do some research and not listen to the locals.
On top of the Schilthorn is fairly decent. Great views, lots of interesting tourists and amazing weather.
WiFi is patchy though.
Bilten, not good. If you're headed down this way you need to go one village further, i.e. Ziegelbrücke/Niederurnen.
Source: I used to live there and commute to Zürich (direct train, 45 minutes, which I didn't think was too bad but different people have different definitions of a 'reasonable' commute) and the wall of fog usually ends somewhere between Bilten and Niederurnen.
Lol. Basel is well known for having the best weather in Switzerland (along with Ticino), unless you're a duck.
Here's a simple graphic illustration: open the following two links in adjacent tabs in your internet browser and toggle between them.
More sunshine hours per day on average in Basel than in Zürich, every month of the year. In particular, note the difference in sunshine hours during the winter months. That's due to the endless fog in Zürich.
Now switch the parameter to "Temperatur". Basel has higher average temperatures (both max. and min., every month), and far fewer days of frost.
Now switch to precipitation ("Niederschlag"). Far less in Basel, and fewer days with precipitation -- and because the weather is warmer, Basel gets hardly any snow.
The figures don't lie!
8636 Wald, Kt Zürich.
The Höhenklinikk (a rehab facility w/another branch in Davos - I believe the original featured in Mann's Der Zauberberg) was built here for the altitude/air and very high percentage of sunny days.
I love looking out over the fog before leaving for Zurich, then returning home to a sunny evening after a gray day.
The figures are somewhat misleading. Monthly relative sunshine duration for Jan 2016 is more or less the same across the whole kanton.
How are the fogs like in:
1) Affoltern district (Hedingen, Affoltern am Albis, Bonstetten)
2) Horgen district (Horgen, Langnau am Albis, Hirzel)
3) Uster district (Dübendorf, Uster)
4) Pfäffikon district (Effretikon)
5) Winterthur district (Winterthur)
I can't speak for the other places but I have lived in Horgen and know the locality pretty well.
The Zurichsee fog is actually produced in the marshland around Kloten airport.
Purely subjective but quite often it seems to get as far as Horgen but then disappears so Au and Waedenswil can be clear when there's fog all the way to Zurich.
It may be the bend in the Lake at this point that causes it. It's not always like this but enough times to be noticeable.
Hirzel can be out of the fog when everything below is in it but also it can be in cloud when everything below it is not (not sunny but not foggy too).
I would say that I'd rather be below cloud than in it. Cloud base doesn't normally get as low as Horgen or anywhere around the lake.
I quite often look at webcams in the area and it's true that Hirzel can be in glorious sunshine when Horgen is in fog but then it can also be in cloud.
Of course, living further around the lake means it's easy to nip up to Raten or Einsiedlen for a Sunday afternoon walk in the sun, compared with living in Zurich.
I've come to the opinion that there are two reasons for Basel's status as the Southern California of Switzerland:
1. Rain shadow effect from the Vosges Mountains which strips the moisture from westerly winds.
2. Warm air from the Mediterranean funneled through the Belfort gap.
Any geography teachers around?
It`s the Möhlin-Jet what does it.
The Vosges are quite a way North of Basel, so I don't think there's so much effect from them. More significant, I suspect, is the effect of the Jura range. As well as funneling westerlies more towards the North they cause the high-level precipitation that gives rise to the 'rain shadow' effect.
A less well known effect of mountains is that the friction of air being pushed across the ground can significantly increase its temperature, which together with being compressed add it's forced up the slope will result in warmer and higher pressure air over the Basel gap area. We can see this in action quite vividly from our house in Alsace, whence we can often watch spectacular lightning storms building up and dispelling as the weather systems move North-East along the Jura. By the time they reach Basel they're mostly spent.
Well, in some years they claim Lucerne is the sunniest city in Switzerland. In other years, it's Basel, and sometimes it's St. Moritz or Lugano - so who really knows
However, I can confirm that the weather is better overall in Basel than in Zurich. I lived in Eastern Switzerland and Zurich for years and have now been in Basel for some 7 or 8 years - and it IS definitely better here (though that's about the only selling point, hehe). It's usually a little warmer (lower altitude, makes sense) and it sees very little fog compared to esp. Mittelland and often Zurich. You drive past Sissach into Mittelland and it just becomes depressing, same sometimes on the otherside - after the tunnels towards Brugg, it's just grey. Needless to say it's sometimes coincidence, but still. Blergh.
Not sure I would move here just for the weather though, and face a quite substantial commute. At least 6 months out of the year it will be dark when you leave the house and dark before you even get home - so who cares about the sunshine? You won't see it If you crave sun (and believe me, I understand that very well and fog and grey for me is absolute horror), try to go somewhere on the weekend to stock up.
The difference in elevation is 150m...
I'm aware.
Under normal atmospheric conditions, that translates to about about 1'C warmer.
to be honest, I haven't noticed much more sun in basel than in zurich. but schaffhausen was noticeably sunnier.
By my highly scientific calculations, that makes it -53° right now at the summit of Mt Everest!
Mine was a relative difference.
You've given an absolute difference so you must know the temperature at a given altitude in China or Nepal near Mt.Everest
knowing lapse rates and so on is quite useful for working out height of cloudbase for gliding.