It’s all about the job. It seems to me that all – well, let’s say most – places have one type of weather problem or another at some point during the year. If you aren’t going to be happy with it, or aren’t able to enjoy yourself at least some of the time, it’s going to be difficult somewhere else as well.
When we lived in Houston, my wife used to complain about the heat and humidity: “I do not want to spend another summer in Houston!”, she said for 12 years. I did get a new job, and now we live in New Hampshire. So now it’s, “I don’t know if I can take another winter like that!” But what about how pleasant winter was in Houston? Or summer in New Hampshire? Or enjoying the fact that we do get snow once in a while? (And personally, I liked the hot summers, but that’s just me.)
I think it’s a rare person who both has one type of weather they would like all the time, and can find and afford to live in a place that has that weather all the time. So enjoy the changes, the differences, and look forward to when your personal favorite time of year rolls around again. But again, maybe that’s just me.
People bitch and bitch about the weather here in the summers, but I like it. Sure, it gets hot, but I grew up with it and while I do complain with everybody else, I really do quite like it. I mean, maybe if I were a ditchdigger and had to dig ditches in 100+ every day, that would suck, but here we go from air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned work. And our houses are built for it. I actually went to school in Atlanta with no air conditioning - you got used to it, and the dorms were built for it. It’s not so bad.
Now what I couldn’t stand is months and months of unrelenting winter. I start to go crazy every year round about February, and the first day that cracks 60 we all wear our summer clothes out of sheer excitement.
Oh, and cost of living is cheap, my family and friends are here, and it’s green. Year round. When we see my mom’s family in Pittsburgh in the winter, there’s no color anywhere. It’s all gray and black and white (mostly gray). How can you look at that for months and months?
You mean aside fromt he fact that I grew up here and haven’t moved out yet?
Actually, I rather LIKE fog. The weather may be crappy and crazy compared to other places, but I enjoy it. And we don’t get super-hot summers or freezing winters either. I also love the people here, and the atmosphere. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
My theory is that people flock to areas where the weather is nice until it reaches the point where crowding and pollution have lowered the quality of life to the same as everywhere else. And that there’s actually a hysteresis effect in the feedback, so that it’s actually quite a bit suckier to live where the weather is always nice.
Take the San Francisco Bay area, for example. Generally glorious weather, except for the occasional fog. Beautiful scenery. Ungodly population density, traffic, and real estate prices. All the orchards cut down and turned into housing developments and condos. Long commutes.
And besides, without crappy weather, you don’t appreciate the spectacular days nearly as much.
Ottawa gets some of the shittiest weather you can imagine for any city of note. We have about 5 months of freezing, cold, snowy and chaotic winter, where the temperature can fluctuate by as much as 30C (I don’t know how many Fahrenheit that is) in one day, both ways. Last year we had about 9 feet of snow by the end of the year. Then we have about 5 months of scorching summer where it’s so humid that even though the air temperature is something like 25 or 28 or so (I think that’s about 73 or 75F), it feels like 35 to 40 (like 90 to 100F). Humid heat is the worst, because you sweat just from thinking of moving. We only have about 1 month each of spring and fall before the extremes kick in, which are the glory days, because in the fall the temperature is so perfect and you can do anything, and the leaves are simply stunning (there are a lot of parks and trees here), and in the spring you are so excited because the 9 feet of snow are disappearing and you can actually go outside without taking 30 minutes to get dressed (layers, it’s all about layers).
Now, why do I stay here? I imagine for the same reason most people stay wherever they are, because I was born here, and have family here. My parents and my sister both live within a 15 minute walk, and I have cousins, an aunt and 2 uncles here. Also, despite the awful weather, this is a fantastic city to live in if you want somewhere safe (maybe 5-10 murders a year, very low violent crime rate, no serious gang problems, etc) to raise a family, and not too big. I can get to anywhere in Ottawa, from the Glebe, which is roughly downtown, within about 15 minutes by car (though the bus system is pretty weak here, unless you live on a main drag). There are about 1.1 million people, so we have the amenities that all big cities have, for the most part, without the problems. Since it’s the capital, the city is generally kept spotless and there are, as I mentioned, a lot of parks and greenspace that are very well-tended and maintained. There are a lot of festivals and events all year round, and the standard of living is very high. In short, why wouldn’t I want to live here? Oh right, the fucking winter (which I genuinely despise).
Hey, if you don’t like the weather in Kentucky, hang around a day or so. It’ll change.
The winters are pretty cold and sometimes snowy (but more often rainy), the summers are very hot and extremely humid. I like it. Even when I’m bitching about being sick of the smothering mugginess or the gray drizzles and mud, I like it. I’m always glad when the weather turns hot, and I’m always heartily sick of the heat by the time it cools off. I’m glad when the first snow falls, and I’m heartily sick of the stuff by spring. (I simply couldn’t live somewhere where it routinely snowed from October to April. I’d go nuts.)
Besides, it’s home, and that’s the best reason to stay of all.
Not everyone defines “brutal winters and humid summers” as crap. Challenging? Yes. But some people take pride in meeting challenges and thriving on them. They find doing so invigorating. I’ll add that some of these people can be amazed at the lack of resilience of those visitors from moderate climates.
As this thread is bearing out, there is more consideration to location of residence than just weather. I would add that some people really like spending time with their friends. As crazy as that sounds, some people don’t like to leave the people who are important to them.
I was born and raised in San Diego… and I just cant bring myself to leave.
The Winters: there are cold night but no having to deal with snow, there is rain- but not a whole lot.
Summers: Theres a couple weeks of hot weather, but its not humid nor very dry and its SO SO easily escapable (air conditioning and the beach of course!). The rest of the summer is perfect!
I love the weather here and as far as im concerned everyone who loves, or doesnt mind the weather where they live- stay there!! Im sick of people moving to San Diego to escape the harsher climates!
Another Colorado Springs person here. Heck, I probably know EngiNerd. I can vouch for EnginNerd’s description. It is snowing outside my office right now. I love the weather here, because I love the outdoors. There is always something to do: ski, run, bike, swim, … It almost never rains. (In fact, that has been our biggest problem for the last 5 years.) Where else could I live, run 6 days a week, never in the rain, and yet still have some semblance of greenry? The only thing I dislike is the wind. Most days there is no wind at all, and then we have days where semitrucks blow over.
Having come from the East Coast though, I’m sure Athena misses the actual seasons. I miss fall in PA; I miss spring in VA. I don’t miss winter in either place. What’s the point of cold and wet, if it isn’t cold enough to have fun in? I travel to Tx all the time. Too damn hot. You can’t even swim it gets so hot. A friend from Cameroon tell me the hottest place he has ever been is Houston. I thought it just seemed that way.
Where I live (Boise, Idaho) the summers can and often do get brutally hot (above 100°). Even though the humidity is low and that I know that higher humidity compounds the heat, it’s still stiflingly hot! The winters are relatively mild and we only see a few snow storms a year (most of the snow falls in the nearby mountains). We don’t get the big blizzards that the Great Lakes and the east coast areas seem to get. I can tolerate cold and rain more than I can heat, so I’d probably like the weather here more if it were like Seattle’s weather. At least we never see hurricanes here and tornadoes are very rare. A friend of mine who moved from Kansas likes knowing that he doesn’t have to worry about tornadoes anymore.
The weather would have to get really shitty for me to want to move on account of the weather alone. As others have stated, I was born and raised here and most of my family lives here, too; plus, I have a good job that I wouldn’t want to leave behind.
Well, on those lovely Chicago days when it’s 103 degrees with 99% humidity or 40 below zero and 70 below with the wind chill, sometimes I wonder myself. I do have a decent job (at least sometimes I think it’s decent, although I could find a comparable one in most major U.S. metro areas), and I do have long-term roots here: I grew up here, and although I’ve spent a couple of stints elsewhere for school, this is pretty much home.
My family honestly ain’t that much of an anchor these days, and most of them live on the East Coast, anyway. I do have some longtime friends here, who I would miss if I moved away, but I also have various other longtime friends scattered literally all over the planet. I suppose if I had something pulling me strongly elsewhere, I’d consider moving. But we Chicagoans are pigheaded; the weather alone isn’t going to make us give up and flee. (And you’re talking to someone who willingly spent a semester living in a ramshackle Soviet dorm about 100 feet from the Bay of Finland, in winter no less.) And Chicago has a lot of other things to offer: world-class culture, the lake, great music, and a reasonable cost of living for a major metro area, which is an all-too-rare combination.
I have on occasion toyed with the idea of becoming an expat for a while, though; living overseas is probably a stronger lure for me than living almost anywhere else in the U.S.
I live in Southern California and have pretty much grown up here except for 3 years where I lived in Seattle. The weather here is great, except for maybe a few hot weeks during the summer. Everything is here and it’s a beautiful part of the country, but it is SO crowded and SO overpriced! We are really ready to move out of here and are considering Las Vegas, where there is more of a music scene (for us) and more culture. Of course it’s extremely hot there during the summer and it can get quite cold in wintertime, which I don’t mind. I’m just so sick of the So Cal lifestyle I guess. It seems like everyone here wants the same thing, a huge house, a huge SUV, and a kid who plays soccer.
I think it’s better to live in a place that’s too cold rather than one that’s too hot because if you’re too cold you can always make yourself warm - you can light a fire or put on more clothes or whatever.
If you’re too hot though there’s nothing you can do to make yourself cold. You could get into a cold bath but then once you get out and dry off you will get hot again. I don’t much like air conditioning either, it dries my eyes out and makes them water. I don’t think it really works anyway. Yes it reduces the temperature but I always still feel too warm inside my body.
Although I think Alaska may be a bit too extreme even for me (beautiful though it is).
Also I think peoples personalities change in hot weather. People become more extrovert and do mad things. I prefer winter when everybody is wrapped up and more introverted.
Population density lowering, thankyewverymuch, thanks to the out of staters going back where they came from now that the boom is over.
Traffic? A complaint about traffic from someone from BOSTON? :rolleyes:
Real estate prices have dropped to less than stratosphere, and certainly no higher(according to Salem, tanookie, and Davebear) than what you’ll find in Boston.
My commute is 20 minutes over the bridge from the east bay into the peninsula. Which part of the “Bay Area” is nothing but housing developments? We have 9 counties that comprise the Bay Area. Tons of wide open space, rolling green hills…not to mention just about everything else you can imagine enjoying. Sans snobbery.
Says you. I appreciate it every time I walk outside in February in a tshirt.
If one is from Canada, one either revels in the snow, or one tries to avoid it where possible. I’m in the latter camp. I loved the summers there, but I hated every winter. I hated it even more each successive winter I had to stay there. I’d get a bad case of Seasonal Affective Disorder, what with all plant life being dead and the skies dull and gray and the temperature unrelentingly frozen from November to April. It would get so I’d just dread October, and nothing could improve my outlook until the snow melted and was gone for another season.
So now I am living The Canadian Dream ™. I moved to Florida. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere south of the Panhandle, because the weather here suits me just fine. South of here, it’s just hotter and more humid. I don’t care if it gets hot - that’s why air conditioning was invented in Florida. At least it doesn’t get cold, the kind of cold I suffered through for 37 seasons. Now in the “winter” I never have to put on anything heavier than a fall jacket. Maybe I’ll have to wear gloves a handful of times in January and/or February when it gets down to the 20s. The rest of the time it’s shirtsleeves weather, even when the locals are wearing parkas (below 65 degrees).
It was a gift of pure luck that the woman I married was from here. I was ecstatically happy to come here and join her. It won’t bother me if I never see another snowflake. Now, people complain about how crappy the weather is in Florida. Given the choice of this or Lake Effect Snow, I am staying put.
To all my fellow Canadian Dopers who might be reading this, I just want to say one thing: Neener.
Lived in Three Rivers, MI until I was 14, moved to Austin, TX until I was almost 19, moving back to Austin (from Kalamazoo, MI) now that I’m almost 21.
Austin weather:
I like that the winters are mild. And spring and fall are BEAUTIFUL, temperature-wise. I do hate the summers, tho. I’m really senstitive to heat (hot coffee spilled on my hand left it unable to move without me crying for two says, and it was a 1st degree). Also, I miss the rain, since it only rains in spring and fall, it seems.
Kalamazoo weather:
Lovely spring and fall, but not quite as nice as Austin. Summers rarely get to “oh my god I’m going to melt” highs. And I like snow, in theory. It’s very pretty. But I hate, HATE driving in it.
But weather isn’t a big consideration in where I’m going to live. If it was, I’d never step foot in Texas again. What I love about Austin are the people, the places, and the culture. Even the horrible traffic can’t make me stop missing that city. I almost start crying when I realize that I’m going to be living there again in just over a month!
Ok, I hate winter. And snow. And I really hate blizzards. Not to mention I’m not too fond of having months of 70%+ humidity in the summer. But you know, there aren’t tornadoes here. Or big earthquakes. Or landslides and almost no Avalanches. Or fires that burn for weeks and destroy homes left, right and center. Or very many major floods. There hasn’t even been a big hurricane since long before I was born.
Crappy day to day weather I can handle. At least I’m confident that my crappy weather isn’t going to do me in (except maybe for the road conditions), so I’ll still be around to whine about the weather.
