We have watched thousands of guesses, staff included, collapse the moment someone falls in love with architecture and ignores the sky. Buildings lie; developers import styles. Trees are lazier. Sun angle, humidity haze, whether deciduous trees look bare or lush, whether grass looks invited or merely tolerated, these are boring clues because they work.
Latitude shows up as a habit, not as a trivia fact
Light gets longer in the north in summer and stranger in the tropics at noon, flat, direct, colors that look washed unless the camera is good. You do not need to be an astronomer. You need to notice whether shadows are crisp or sleepy, whether people dress for dry cold versus wet chill versus relentless warm evenings.
Plant life is regional handwriting
Palms are not "always tropical," but they are a nudge. Mediterranean scrub reads different from rainforest understory. Snow hanging on branches narrows your season and your plausible band of latitudes. Pollarded street trees speak to European maintenance habits more often than to Arizona.
Combine vegetation with pavement wear: freeze-thaw cracks versus heat blistering versus monsoon staining. It sounds nerdy because it is, and nerdy is how you climb the leaderboard.
A plea from the writer's room
If you only take one lesson: let the environment argue with your assumptions. Sometimes the building says Paris and the trees say "not even close." Believe the trees.