Small technical project with maps and data?

[overdrive148]

So say I'm trying to help a friend narrow down some potential places to live in the future long-term. I asked about some criteria he'd like to meet in a place to live, and I'd like to put together some potential places for him using some maps and data and survey stuff etc.

For example:

2500ft and below, under 85*F and above 32*F (averages?), drier than normal but still seasonable, no cities or suburbs, somewhere with awesome gun laws that allows him to shoot anywhere he likes.

So I'm thinking:

Topographical maps for the U.S. to find elevations lower than 2500ft => Mean temperature maps for the US to find mean temps lower than 85* and higher than 32*F (combine into one map with both criteria met) => Find cities/towns in those zones of populations less than maybe 30,000 people => Put them in a list and sort them by state to be able to judge gun laws by state or look them up. Also to make it easier to check those places and mark off where he's looked.

It sounds like a lot of info to go through and it'd certainly not be in one place, but it seems at least doable. How, I have no idea though. I could find the elevation and climate data and maybe try to superimpose those and only have areas in them that correspond but it sounds rough without photoshop and etc. And then finding areas in that area that'd be 30k people or less and superimposing that would be kinda rough. I'd be willing to take those cities by hand by state and typing them out since that'd be the only way to do it.

Thoughts? Since a lot of you are engineers and technical types

 

[DJTorrente]

I found the US census site helpful when scoping out new towns associated with my job relocation. I was, however, looking within a fixed radius of my office. You might also try US atlas or national atlas. Last time I used it, it would let you build maps based on a variety of data sets.