Climate × materials simulator · 0 → 20 years
Twenty years of weather.
Twenty seconds.
Pick your city and watch a deck or fence age the way your local sun, rain and frost will age it.
Model simulation from 1991–2020 climate normals — illustrative, not a guarantee.
Same board · year 10
Every city has a weather fingerprint.
Sun bleaches, damp grows mildew, frost splits. The shape of a city’s climate decides which one wins on your house.
The specimen shelf
New, and twenty years on.
Each material has a page for every city we cover. Below: the aged half shows a damp marine climate (Seattle).
Pressure-treated pine, vinyl fence, fiber cement siding, asphalt and metal roofing, exterior paint.
National typical-life ranges are industry estimates; your local result can be shorter or longer.
Browse by city
25 cities, three ways a deck wears out.
Grouped by what our model says hits an untreated cedar deck hardest. Life ranges are model estimates for untreated cedar.
Moisture & decay
Sun & UV
Freeze–thaw
Rankings
Where weather is hardest on wood.
Straight from the station data for the 25 cities we cover so far.
Where wood decks rot fastest
Scheffer decay index
- 01Miami, FL155.8
- 02Mobile, AL110.2
- 03Tampa, FL103.6
- 04New Orleans, LA100.9
- 05Houston, TX84.5
- 06Atlanta, GA79.5
Where sun hits decks hardest
Daily-mean UV index, 2001–2020 (NASA POWER)
- 01Albuquerque, NM1.7
- 02Miami, FL1.6
- 03Phoenix, AZ1.6
- 04Tampa, FL1.6
- 05Los Angeles, CA1.5
- 06Las Vegas, NV1.5
Where freeze–thaw splits wood
Days crossing 32 °F per year
- 01Denver, CO135.1
- 02Salt Lake City, UT91.1
- 03Albuquerque, NM90.7
- 04Buffalo, NY75.1
- 05Minneapolis, MN74.8
- 06Boston, MA68.4
How the simulation works
From thirty years of weather to one picture.
NOAA 1991–2020 station normals: temperature, rainy days, frost and heat days. NASA POWER for humidity and UV.
Sun dose, decay hazard (Scheffer index), freeze–thaw cycles, humidity and coastal salt.
Graying, bleaching, checks, mildew and rot, each growing at a rate set by the drivers.
Rendered procedurally, year by year — the same engine for the page, the slider and the pins.
It is a model, not a guarantee. Full methodology and sources.