For adults who moved to a significantly colder/warmer climate as adults: did you retain the habits of your childhood climate, or did you eventually adapt to your new climate?
A FB friend of mine had lived his entire life in Indiana and Illinois, and has recently moved to Florida at the age of 51. He’s always posting on Facebook, laughing about how the locals break out their parkas if the temperature gets below 55. However, I imagine he won’t be singing that same song ten years from now, and will be doing like his neighbors and complaining of freezing at temperatures that he would have laughed at before.
Does your experience bear this out? Do you eventually adapt to your new climate?
Fully adapted very quickly when I moved to Brazil. At first I felt I could barely move in 40 degrees C, I would be so happy to go in somewhere with airco! But soon I noticed I would have to bring sweaters with me everywhere in case I had to go into buildings with aircon.
In the winter in the mountains, it would drop to about 15C at night. I would sleep with a hot water bottle and socks on. In the day at about 20C (the coldest it would ever get) I would be freezing, wearing layers etc. Back in the UK 20C is the height of summer, it means flipflops and going to the beach asap
I was so cold here when I first got back!
I’ve switched back and forth many times in my life.
The major change as an adult was to southern Thailand from ‘temperate’ UK. The first two weeks in 38C and 100% humidity were horrible and I felt suffocated for a while and dripped with sweat constantly like you wouldn’t believe. After that though something changed in my body and the sweating altered - it didn’t cease but became more ‘realistic’. Eventually I was wearing jeans when it got down to 30, and anything under 25 felt very cold and I would wear a jacket.
Took me several months to revert to the colder climate of the UK when I got back. I adapted too well to be honest. I’m now addicted to the heat and wonder if I am genetically predisposed to a tropical climate.
I’m thinking seriously about moving to warmer climes.
The reasons? Here in New England, the winters seem to be getting longer and colder-plus, late winter weather is stretching into May, in many years.
All the while, we seem to be getting more and more Northeaster Storms-when you get snow, rain, freezing rain, then ice…then back to snow-exhausting to shovel, and dangerous to drive in.
I didn’t mind winters when you wold get dry snow, follwed by snny cold days-that’s the kind of winter weather I like. But these horrendous northeasters are terrible.
I grew up in Arkansas, and moved to Maine at 29. I never really adapted to the southern summers, and am much more comfortable up here than I was down there.
It has been 16 years since I left the Pacific Northwest. Since then I have lived in Hawaii and then Northern California.
I still haven’t come to appreciate consistently warm dry weather and am still happiest on cloudy rainy days and very rarely wear more than a light jacket and never use an umbrella.
The two years I was in Hawaii, the warm nights and general lack of household air conditioning resulted in hardly any good nights of sleep until I started sleeping on my lanai without any bedding on me (I was on the 14th floor above the flying cockroaches and lizards) so at least the air was moving. That did instill an apparently lifelong habit as I still, even after 13 years in Northern California where the nights are cooler only sleep with a sheet over me on the coldest of nights.
I moved from Chicago to Singapore years ago. It was January when we moved, and in Chicago in January it’s kind of impossible to imagine ever being hot. I packed way more sweaters and jackets than is necessary for a location less than 100 miles from the equator.
Anyway, I eventually adjusted to the permanent heat and humidity, but it was a slow adjustment and I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d become until visitors from the US came. They would get all red and sweaty and I would just be a little warm.
Born and raised in Ohio. Used to walk around my college campus in 40ºF weather wearing shorts and a sweatshirt.
Moved to Florida at 22. When the thermometer dips below 75ºF (during the day), I turn the heat on in the house. I start wearing jeans and sweatshirts/hoodies at around 80ºF.
My friends and family back in Ohio constantly make fun of me. “You grew up here in the cold and snow. Can’t handle it anymore?”
No. I can’t. It’s a simple concept called “acclimation.” Say it with me, kids: Acc-li-ma-tion. Many times, I’ve boarded a plane where it was 90ºF+ on the ground and deplaned where it was 60ºF something. That’s a 30-degree drop in about 2 hours! That would be a shock to anyone; however, the Ohio folks apparently don’t fly much and don’t seem to ever experience what that feels like.
It took me about a year to get really acclimated to the heat and humidity. Now, when I go to Ohio and the temp is in the 80s and the humidity is in the 70-80% range, that just feels like spring or fall to me while my family members are complaining about how I brought all that steamy hot Florida summer weather with me. They really have no concept of exactly how hot and humid it gets and how used to it one gets over time. On occasion when someone visits, they will be dripping sweat and I won’t even be sweating because they never visit me in the dead worst of the hot summertime. It’s usually spring or fall and is “not that hot” if you live here. But it could be 20º warmer than what they are used to and they can’t understand how I can stand it. I can’t understand how they can stand to be outside for more than a minute when it’s 30º out.
I will note: I always hated being cold, even when I lived up north. Only now, I can tolerate it much less because I’m just not accustomed to experiencing that chill for six months out of the year.
I have a friend who spent two years in Ohio in grad school; he grew up in Southern Alabama. He experienced the same shock. 50º doesn’t really sound all that cold unless you’ve been spending 24/7 in an environment that sees 50º once or twice a year. If you’re used to 80-90º even in January, 50º seems downright frigid.
Moved from N. Virginia to FL at 55, I have never missed the cold or the snow. I should have moved here in my 20’s. Acclimating to the humidity took about a year. Acclimating to the heat, no time at all.
I grew up in New York City and have also lived in Colorado and Washington DC. For the past 20 years I’ve lived in Panama.
I vastly prefer occasionally being hot to having to deal with snow and ice. In any case, it never gets as hot here as it does during the summer in the so-called temperate zone. (It’s rarely over 95 here even on the hottest days.)
I don’t particularly mind the heat and humidity. I deal with it the same as locals do, by staying indoors or in the shade during the heat of the day. In the evening and at night the temperature is very pleasant.
At the same time, I haven’t particularly lost my tolerance for cold. Fall temperatures when I go up north don’t bother me, and while I hate subfreezing days, I can put up with them. On the other hand, when I’ve gone on joint trips with them up north during the winter, my Panamanian colleagues begin to shiver if the temperature drops below 70.
I moved from New Jersey to the Bay Area 15 years ago (and lived in downstate Illinois where it was colder before that) and I’m still laughing at the weather who says a low of 32 at night is bitter cold.
I’ve acclimatized enough so that I scoff at people who complain about winters here, but when I go back to my parents’ house I complain about the winters there.
Moved from Putnam County, NY, to the New Orleans 'burbs in high school, then to Northern Virginia at 20. Other than the distinct lack of snow, the climates aren’t all that much different between New Orleeans and here. My first Mardi Gras was in February and there was a strong wind that cut through my parka like it wasn’t there!
For me it’s the heat AND humidity. It’s never as dry as it is in the Southwest, where it can be 100 and feel like Florida in the mid-80s or cooler.
I still haven’t acclimated to the heat index after 25 years.
The humidity isn’t that great at normal temperatures either, since with a high humidity the only time it feels like great weather is when it’s exactly 65-70 degrees with a light breeze. Otherwise it’s either too cold or too hot.
I grew up in SCal, and I remember the time when summers were DRY heat and swamp coolers were remarkably effective. Winters were mild, and snow was something we VISITED in the mountains. You drive up to the snow, play until you get cold and wet, let the snow accumulate on the car, and then drive back down to the flatlands and people would see the snow and say, “Oh, neat, they’ve been to the mountains!”
I married an Army man, and we moved all over.
I got to experience snow BEYOND the fun, as we lived in Germany (twice), Wisconsin, and Kentucky. I came to the conclusion that I HATE SNOW.
I also found that I violently hate HUMIDITY. And the bugs that seem to accompany humidity.
We came back to SCal when Hubster retired from the Army, and raised our family. We eventually decided that SCal just wasn’t for us, and we bought property in NE AZ.
And we found an ideal way to handle the snow problem: stay with our kids in SCal through the holidays. That solution has the added benefit of enjoying a grandchild.
~VOW
I never really wanted to live anywhere that was cold, but in North Texas we’re getting both extremes. I can count the times its snowed during my childhood on one hand, and its snowed more than that the last few years. We actually had snow a week or so ago, and I can’t remember ever having snow this early, its usually in February-March. Lat winter was brutal. This summer was, too. I love the heat, despise the cold.
Generally I’ve adapted - I went from the Southeastern US to the Northeastern, back again, up to Ohio, out to Arizona and now I’m back in the Southeast.
The only place I didn’t do well was adapting to the “dry heat” of AZ - my sinuses hurt badly with the dryness there. I do much better when there’s humidity available.
Temperature wise, I adapt fairly quickly - the first years is usually an adjustment (last winter in Atlanta felt cold after 3 years in AZ, this year I wish it was cooler ) .
I grew up bouncing between the Mediterranean (hot) and Scotland (not hot but not really that cold - mostly wet) and then lived in California, Colorado and currently Michigan, the coldest of the lot.
I adore cold weather and snow, every spring when things start thawing and growing and birds come back is magical to me, I even enjoy winter driving when the roads are wicked and icy. It’s like a fun challenge. I’m weird.
And ever since menopause I lost all tolerance for hot, humid weather so if it never got above, say, 75 degrees, I’d be really happy. I’d be truly unhappy if I had to live in a state like Florida or Mississippi for the rest of my life.
