Thinking of moving from the West Coast to the Great Lakes, questions

In My Humble Opinion
1

A little background: I live in a suburb of Portland, Oregon. My wife has a successful bookkeeping business. I teach part-time at a local community college, and work part time for my wife. I turned 52 last month, wife will be 53 next month. We did not make good decisions when we were young, and so we have some catch-up to do as far as saving for retirement. We’ve recently acquired a financial advisor, and have come up with a plan.

I’ll be getting my student loans forgiven sometime next year, under the 10-year public service loan forgiveness plan. Once that is done, I am going to phase out the teaching and ramp up working for my wife. Doing so has far greater potential for both of us to make more money, and sock more away.

We’ve always planned on leaving this area when we retire. We’ve mainly had some vague plan of moving to the coast. But, once I’m done with the college, there’s no reason to stay here, no reason to wait. 95% of our bookkeeping business is all done online, so we can move anywhere we want. We might lose a few clients, but they will be easily replaced. Now I have a bug up my butt about moving somewhere where the cost of living is much lower. That would mean more money saved.

So, here’s what this thread is really about. The number one consideration for me, in deciding where to live, is climate. I hate the summer heat. I fled to Portland from California 20 years ago, for that very reason. It used to be that the summers here were short, with a few days here and there where the temperature got above 90. Climate change has, er, changed all that. Now we get heat waves, and it doesn’t really cool down at night.

The coast would be the ideal place as far as that goes. The temperatures rarely get above 80 there. But, my second most important consideration is cost of living, and the coast ain’t it.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to live in a place that has real winters. Like, where it snows, and the snow sticks around. We get a little bit once or twice each winter in Portland, but it melts away within a day or two. My idea of paradise is Juneau. The temperatures rarely get above 70 in the summer, and it snows in the winter. But, again… the cost of living there is sky-high.

So, I’ve been researching places that would work. Then I have to sell my wife on these candidates. HER biggest requirement is that we be near the water. She doesn’t ever want to be “land-locked,” as she puts it. I’ve been looking at cities on the Great Lakes. We want something smaller than places like Chicago or Milwaukee, but big enough that, 20-30 years down the road, we’ll have easy access to good medical care. I’ve narrowed it down to Duluth and Green Bay.

I’ve read about what the climate is like in both, and I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather forecasts for both over the last couple of months. Of the two, I’m way more interested in Duluth. It seems like it has cooler summers than Green Bay, which appears to be similar to Portland. I also keep seeing that these areas are more humid during the summer. I’m not really sure what to think of that. I’ve lived in California and Oregon all my life, where it doesn’t get excessively humid. Sometimes we’ll get rain in the summer here, and it does get muggy then. I recall two times in my life when I’ve experienced high humidity: visiting Honolulu in May, and Dallas in October. I think in both cases the humidity was like 98%, and it was awful. It was like trying to breathe water. Dallas was way worse, because it was also like 100 degrees. How would Duluth and Green Bay compare?

But I’m also a little concerned about the winters. I’m enamored over the idea of having snow, but I’m worried that going to Duluth would be too extreme. I mean, I really like the idea, but I’ve read Duluth is one of the snowiest places in the nation. Am I going to get halfway through my first winter there and be like “WTF was I thinking?!”

We are planning a trip next August to visit both Duluth and Green Bay. I’ll find out for myself what the summers are like then. Visiting during the winter won’t really be feasible, though. But anyway, in the meantime, I’m hoping to get thoughts from people who are familiar with either or both areas, on what they are like – both the climate, and just in general.

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I’ve only been to Duluth, so i can’t really compare. But Duluth is a nice town. There’s skiing nearby, as well as the lake, and if you want to go to Minneapolis it’s not too far away. If you’re the outdoor sort Duluth has a lot going for it (hiking, fishing, hunting, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, etc).

I don’t know if I’d call it one of the snowiest places in the country, but it does get a significant amount of snow. Be prepared for significant shovelling, buying a snow blower, or hiring someone, depending on your level of physical fitness and financial situation. If you’re not experienced with driving in winter conditions it may be a bit of a learning curve, especially since some areas of Duluth are quite hilly. You’ll probably want winter tires. And it can get cold, and stay cold, for extended periods - say a week at -15 F. Personally I’m still able to enjoy outside activities in those conditions, but some people aren’t able to do anything but cozy up inside. Be aware that the lake is rarely warm, and in the winter the surface can freeze over completely - I’m not sure if you’re wife would consider that “land-locked” or not.

Summer absolutely can get muggy, and yes it does sometimes feel like breathing through water. A dehumidifier inside, or frequent trips to the lake, which is usually a lot cooler, can help. Temperatures will rarely hit 90, but it might feel hotter than that if it’s humid enough. Other than that, the only bad thing about summers in Duluth and area are the bugs in early summer, which can get pretty vicious.

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Been to both and will actually be up in Duluth this weekend for the airshow.
GreenBay is a little too sleepy for me. If you like bed-n-breakfast type touristy areas Door County peninsula is right up the road.
Duluth is pretty neat but the winters would drive me nuts. However, if you had no type of daily commute that was necessary and lived in an apartment, townhouse, condo where you didn’t have to deal with snow removal it would probably be rather pleasant.

4

As a Midwestern boy, I’ll warn you that breathing in the summer is like trying to breathe through a pillow.
It’s not as bad as the Deep South, but pretty close at times.
Be prepared for that!

5

I don’t know a lot about Duluth, but I do know a lot about Green Bay: I grew up there, my family still lives there, and I visit there regularly.

Summers are hotter and more humid than they used to be. It’s not uncommon to get summertime highs in the upper 80s and low 90s now, usually accompanied by noticeable humidity. It’s not awful, compared to, say, the southeastern U.S., but it’s going to be definitely warmer, in stretches, during the summertime than what you currently get where you live.

Here’s a link to the National Weather Service’s forecast page for Green Bay; what it’s showing is pretty typical for what summertimes are like there now – highs in the low to mid 80s, with some significant humidity (dew points are going to be in the low 60s for the next few days, which is noticeably muggy). You’ll definitely want to have air conditioning.

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=44.51320000000004&lon=-88.00986999999998

As far as precipitation, summertime is punctuated by thunderstorms, though they aren’t super-common. Winter is cold: overnight lows below zero, and daytime highs that don’t go above freezing, are common. They do get a fair amount of snow (typically about 4 to 5 feet over the course of a winter), though as the city’s on the leeward side of Lake Michigan, it only rarely gets “lake effect” snow.

Green Bay isn’t a big city, despite having an NFL team; the city itself is only about 100K people, and the metropolitan area is about 320K. A lot of the area’s identity is tied up with the Packers, as well as outdoor recreation (especially deer hunting and fishing). It definitely has the feel of a small city (or a very big town), and can feel a little provincial sometimes.

Historically, the biggest industry in the area has been paper-making, and there are still several paper manufacturing plants in the area. While pollution isn’t as bad as it used to be, paper-making can still yield an interesting aroma in the atmosphere from time to time.

It’s fairly conservative politically, though it’s not “deep red” – the city went for Biden (barely) in 2020. It’s more diverse than it used to be; the 2020 census shows that the population is 18% Hispanic/Latino, 7% Black, 6% Native American (the Oneida Nation has a reservation which abuts the city, and the Menominee Nation has a reservation about 30 miles away), and 5% Asian (many of those are Hmong, who settled in the area in the 1970s).

It’s also worth noting that Wisconsin as a whole, and Green Bay in particular, has a very strong “drinking culture,” due to its Germanic heritage. There are a ton of bars and “supper clubs” (informal sit-down restaurants, which also have bars), and it has among the highest incidences of binge drinking of any city in the U.S.

The terrain in the area is more along the lines of rolling hills than actual mountains. There’s a lot of outdoor recreation available, particularly if you go further north and west, into the more forested “up north” areas (which also has a ton of small lakes). If downhill skiing is your thing, you’ll have to travel a few hours to get to ski areas with actual mountains.

Green Bay has a small airport (Austin Straubel International Airport); as with most smaller cities, to get to anywhere but a hub airport for one of the airlines, you’ll have to make a connection. The city is at the northern end of two interstate highways (I-43 and I-41); to get to the bigger cities in the region, it’s a 2-hour drive to Milwaukee, 2.5 hours to Madison, and 3-4 hours to Chicago.

Happy to answer further questions!

6

It’s a tradeoff. Climate in the Great Lakes depends on whether you’re upwind or downwind of the lakes, and also how far north you are. Places that are downwind of their lake (Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Erie, Marquette) tend to have a lot of cloudy weather year-round, lake-effect rain in the fall and lake-effect snow in the early winter and more snow overall. On the upside, they tend to have cooler summers, slightly warmer winters, and longer growing seasons. Places that are upwind of their lake (Duluth, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Toronto) have colder winters but usually with less snow, shorter growing seasons, and less cloudy weather.

A good measure of the summertime humidity is the average overnight low temperature in the warmest month (usually July in the Great Lakes). That’s because the temperature tends to drop pretty fast once the sun goes down, until it approaches the dew point, which a measure of the absolute humidity. Duluth has two weather stations, Duluth Harbor by the water and Duluth airport several miles inland and 800 feet higher in elevation. Both have overnight lows in July around 55 or 56 degrees. I can testify that Duluth has very pleasant non-muggy summers for the most part, though it can occasionally get hot and humid. Summers and the growing season are fairly short. Winters are long and brutally cold. Annual snowfall varies by exact location. It’s roughly 60 inches/year near the lake but more at the airport. That’s high by national standards but low by the standards of the Great Lakes (when compared to Marquette at 149" and Buffalo at 95"). Lake effect snow is rare in Duluth because the wind is usually blowing the wrong direction (or the right direction if you dislike a lot of snow).

I liked Duluth when I visited several times in the 1990s, but I understand they now have a problem with meth-heads committing a lot of property crime to fund their addiction, especially catalytic converter theft. If you visit Duluth, be sure to visit nearby town like Two Harbors and Cloquet, which are in many ways nice than Duluth itself. The whole region a great place for all kinds of outdoor recreation in all four season.

You might consider the eastern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. For example, Alpena, Michigan, on Lake Huron but upwind of it, has summertime humidity and temperatures similar to Duluth’s but their winter temperatures are about 10 degrees warmer and their growing season is longer. Alpena gets more snow than Duluth, about 80"/year. Alpena and Duluth get about the same amount of sunshine, 2300 hours a year. That’s not buckets of sun but it’s comparable to Portland. Alpena is a much smaller town, only about 30,000, and it’s a long haul to get to a significantly bigger city.

7

Humid heat is oppressive heat, as you have discovered. Not only does it leave you a soaking mess, it serves to ramp up the heat index to a serious degree. California/Oregon dry heat waves are by contrast much easier to tolerate. If heat were the #1 consideration, I’d say don’t move to the midwest/east coast period. Portland is generally more pleasant temperature-wise over longer portions of the year. You do get a bit more used to it over time, but IME only a bit (I’ve lived in both).

Also beware of greener-grass syndrome. My step-mother was born and raised in California and always wanted to move back east, particularly NYC. When all of us kids were finally out of the house and more or less gainfully employed, she and my father made the jump to the Newark/NYC area. I was witness to the annual erosion of enthusiasm. She loved her first year, but within five was looking for a way out. It took another several years from there to get back to CA and now if she never sees another snowy winter or muggy summer it will be too soon. That may not end up being you, but you should be prepared that it might be.

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Strictly IMO here, but I do and have lived in the Great Lakes regions most of my life so here goes:

First, I think you really do need to visit in winter. You say that’s not practical, but you’re planning to live here? But, maybe there are reasons so I won’t belabor the point.

First, the summers: like everywhere else, the Great Lakes regions have been getting warmer but not to the degree of some other places. You will get 90+ days, but you won’t get the unrelenting heat waves currently seen in the US South. You will want some form of air conditioning. You do NOT want a swamp cooler because you’d need a drier climate for them to work. So - air conditioning, and de-humidifier so you have a place to retreat from heat when it occurs. As we are next to huge bodies of water humidity is an issue, but not an insurmountable one. We do get humidity 90%+ from time to time during the summer months but we don’t usually get super high temperatures with it. This is even more true the further north you go. You will find heat+humidity uncomfortable, hence my recommendations regarding your HVAC - a dehumidifier for when it’s not very hot but is very humid, and an air conditioner for when it is both or just hot and dry. A lot of AC units sold around here can do both (like, right now it’s about 70 outside with 98% humidity so I have my AC on the “dry” setting, which just dehumidifies and it’s keeping my home quite comfortable).

Those huge bodies of water do tend to moderate the weather around them, though, keeping the summer temps lower and winter temps higher than locations a couple hundred miles away. On the other hand, real estate right next to the water is going to cost more. Also more vulnerable to flooding. You want to find a sweet spot far enough from your neighboring Great Lake to moderate the weather but not to be vulnerable to the lake itself. Be aware of river floodplains as well. The terrain is a lot flatter out here than most places so it’s not so obvious what is “high” ground and what isn’t.

About the winters: they are colder and more severe than what the US gets on either coast (outside of Alaska, and some areas of southern coastal Alaska might have a longer winter but not necessarily as cold a winter). These are not as bad as in the past in duration, but we’re still getting the occasional day below -20 F here on the south end of Lake Michigan and you’re considering moving to a spot further north than that. Just starting a vehicle in that sort of cold is probably not something you’re familiar with, and then there’s matter of dressing properly for such weather. These skills are all easily learned, provided you are motivated to do so, but you probably don’t have them at this point.

If you’re retired and therefore are no longer obligated to go outside every day you can just hunker down. I socialize with a number of older people, including a dignified matron of more than 90 years and many of them simply stay inside during the worst weather, whether that’s cold or heat or severe storms or whatever. In regards to snow removal I’d recommend you purchase a snow blower if you’re doing it yourself, or hire a service for that purpose. (I happen to live in a building where the management takes care of this for me, except I have to leave for work hours before they arrive so… I have a shovel, which is sufficient to get me out of my parking spot to the road, which is cleared by the town I live in).

You already know to avoid a place like Chicago with its high cost of living.

A lot of this comes down to how well you’re going to adjust to our winters. It’s certainly doable - literally millions of people cope with winters in the Great Lakes regions every year. On the other other hand, I’m always amazed by people who have lived in this region all their lives and don’t cope well with the winters.

Have you given anything to what you would do if you move out this way and after a year or two decide you don’t like it?

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I was researching a bike trip around Lake Superior, and learned one thing that has stuck with me: Black Flies.

10

Not complete without this jaunty little number.

11

Good advice here.

My parents are both in their 80s; when the weather in Green Bay is super-cold or snowy, they just don’t plan to leave the house for a few days (and they make sure that there’s plenty of food in the house). They don’t have a very long driveway, but even so, they invested in a big (two-stage) snowblower, so that they can be certain that they can get the driveway cleared.

The city is really good at snow removal, but when you get a foot of snow overnight (which happens one or two times a winter), it does take the better part of a day to get all of the side streets clear.

12

Thanks for the replies so far everyone!

I do want to clarify, I can handle a little heat, and I think I’d be ok with some humidity. It’s when it goes on and on for weeks or months on end that I have a problem with. That’s how it was in California, and that’s what we’re headed towards in Portland. So I want out.

As for the winters… I’ve been to Anchorage in January. It was during a cold snap, in fact. I don’t think it got much above zero for the three days I was there. I thought it was awesome. But… yeah, maybe after several months of that I wouldn’t be quite so excited.

Oh yeah, and my wife and I will both be working from home. Going outside, during summer or winter, would be optional!

13

To build a little bit on what I’d mentioned, about political leanings, as the OP currently lives in a famously liberal city:

Wisconsin has a history of progressivism, though in the last few decades, the state, as a whole, as become decidedly more conservative. It’s now a swing state in presidential elections, but the GOP has successfully gerrymandered the state senate, and controls that (though the state has a Democratic governor). One of Wisconsin’s two U.S. senators is a lesbian Democrat (Tammy Baldwin); the other is a MAGA Republican (Ron Johnson).

Madison is a super-liberal college city, and probably closest in feel to a place like Portland; it and Milwaukee (biggest city in the state, large non-White population) are the state’s liberal strongholds, but much of the rest of the state is pretty conservative, if not downright Trumpy.

I know that Minnesota, generally, is a bit more liberal than Wisconsin is these days, but I don’t know as many details about the exact goings-on there.

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Yeah, I’ve looked into that a bit. Not as big a deal to me, but it is to my wife. She doesn’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of MAGAts. I don’t either, but I tend to stay away from people in general, while she is more social. My understanding is that Duluth is more liberal, which is another plus.

15

You narrowed that down to Duluth and Green Bay?!?! Greater Cleveland is where you want to be.

16

Cleveland does have some amazing medical resources but Ohio as a whole is a deep Red with a number of state government people being MAGA on steroids. If you’re cis gender heterosexual Christians and don’t have family members outside that description sure, it can be a nice place to live. If you’re not… well, not so much.

17

You don’t want those other Great Lakes states, you want Michigan. The winters are far less severe, temperature wise, than the lesser states in the region. Live in the Grand Rapids area and you’ve got easy access to the best beaches in the state in a half hour drive. Go up to the Traverse City area and you’ve got very nice summer weather. If you don’t want MAGA neighbors, don’t go south of Muskegon and forget the Lake Huron or Lake Superior shores.

18

You might also want to look into Appleton, WI (about 25 minutes SW of Green Bay). My experience is that it’s a bit more liberal than Green Bay (in part because it’s a college town), as well as being better for cultural stuff.

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That’s just about all of the great lakes states outside of the cities.

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I’ve lived right on Lake Michigan’s western shore between Sheboygan to the north and Port Washington to the south, and love it. We have our own microclimate here, cooler by the lake in the summer, warmer by the lake in the winter. I-43 gives rapid access to Milwaukee and Green Bay, and one can even be in Chicago with about 2.5 hours of driving. Groceries are available from decent village stores less than 5 minutes away, but otherwise it’s quite rural along the lake, with its sandy beach. I’ve been swimming in the lake every day this week so far, as the water temperature’s above 60 and the water is crystal clear and the bottom is nice and sandy.

To the west are the Kettle Moraines with their drumlins, eskers, cames and hiking trails. Cheese factories, apple orchards, meat markets with their own recipes for bratwurst and somersausage abound, as do corner taverns.

The roads get plowed pretty quick after snow. And we don’t get too much lake effect snow as the prevailing winds are out of the west.

Large public beach parks include Kohler-Andrae, Harrington, and of course they have public beaches in Sheboygan and Port Washington also.