Using Real-World Weather and Time In a Fantasy Game

Just got a question from a player about what the weather's like now in the game world, which determines whether the PCs should have winter clothing and sleeping furs.  I decided that actually generating random weather and keeping track of an in-game calendar with seasons sounded too much like work, so I'm going to steal an idea from Peter's Felltower game and use real-world seasons and weather from a location that could stand in for Cillamar.  (This also implies that game time mostly moves at about the same speed as real-world time.  So if we play every Friday, the PCs typically get a week of downtime in town between game sessions.  And if things in the real world force us to miss a weekly session, the PCs probably stayed in town for an extra week too.)

The Kingdom of Morrain is kind of far north and kind of hilly, so at first I thought maybe somewhere in Eastern Canada would make a good match.  But I'm an American and I'm more familiar with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's weather.gov site than with the equivalent in Canada, so I went with Syracuse, New York.  For those who haven't been there, Syracuse is inconveniently cold and snowy in the winter, but not usually Drop Dead Instantly If You Go Outside Naked Without A Warmth Spell cold.  (Sometimes, but not usually.)  It's mostly pleasant in the summer, with some hot days and humid days and thunderstorms mixed in.  There are a lot of cloudy days year round, so it's not the place to live if you need sun to be happy, but the natives of Cillamar, like the natives of Upstate New York, are mostly used to that.

The game is starting in late spring, which is convenient for the PCs, because it means a long time until they likely have to deal with snow.  And by the time winter rolls around, the (surviving and/or replacement) PCs will probably have more money and character points.