Warmer states?

omg dani o_o -45?...
I live closer to the ocean so that keeps our temperatures a little warmer.. I think the coldest it's been here this year is probably -10C or so.. And even that's too cold for me lol

I live in the bay area in california, and honestly we're moving out of state because everything is getting too expensive to live here anymore. While it doesn't get any lower than high 20s in the winter and doesn't snow I wouldn't recommend moving here unless you have a really good job lined up or have a lot of money saved up.

Not to mention in CA, the *insane* wildfire season. Which has been escalating and has now taken to burning down towns and living complexs. I lived in CA most of my life. It is beautiful and probably has the best weather in the US. However, as Champagne said, cost of living and life is EXTREMELY expensive. And the fire season is getting longer and longer and more severe. My husband and I moved to the east coast this year because we weren't happy in CA anymore. Before we left, there was a massive fire just miles from where we lived. We are so fortunate to not have lost our home (or our lives!) to that fire. It killed 9 people and burned over 40k acres. It was 1 of several fires that started all at the same time in October of 2017.

I would NOT recommend CA. I will take 4° temps over the risk of a horrific fire season any day!

East coast NC gets hurricanes, but I am just a few hours from the coast and we have only had one here in the past 10 years or so? Nothing scary at all! 

@Madoka- Utah's great!
Granted, we do have cold winters and yesterday it was about 20° the whole day, but our summers aren't that hot. We get to around 90° as the maximum, and spring and fall are pretty mild. 
That said, if you don't like crowded spaces, don't move to SLC (Rent is WAAAY expensive and there's about 1mil+ people in that city) South Jordan/West Jordan is a little better, but still WAY expensive. Down by St. George, it's warm all the time (sometimes up to 100° lol) but I live in one of the larger cities about 20min from SLC and love it

Last edited on 2018-01-01 at 10:00:04 by Bandit II

@Mouse - Wow! Thanks for your amazingly detailed answer!

Dallas sounds great because of the doctors and hospital-  though they have managed to stay out of the hospital lately, both of my kiddos have a gastrointestinal syndrome that means we like to be in decent range of a good medical facility. But I have to say, your description of Stillwater is SO charming, engaging and enriching...I want to move there today! Wow! All of the culture! And luckily we are going to homeschool so the school system is one thing we don't have to worry about. ;) I now want to move  immedately...lol!

@Madoka -I never thought about hot hot summers being just the 'same' as cold winters- that is so true!! I have heard good things about Utah...

@Champagne/Deadpool - Yikes, yeah, I had forgotten about wildfires!!! And while I wish I could say cost of living isn't an issue...it actually really is. MN is already darn expensive as it is - we just scrape by here and hubby has quite a good job. >_> More expensive plus more fire...yeah, might not be worth the gorgeous weather, huh?

@Bandit - Are there any non-crowded but desirable places in Utah? We live in a large suburb very near the city now and I haaate it. It's crowded and dirty and I don't even like to let my girls play in the front yard because of crime. >_>

Last edited on 2018-01-02 at 14:19:05 by North

I live in southern Charlotte North Carolina. 10 minutes form south carolina in 3 directions. Greensboro gets a good amount of ice so either below that or above it is good. Our family is house hunting currently so we're taking all these things into account as well. It's mostly warm here. We don't get a lot of winter if at all. Fall perhaps if we're lucky. Normally it doesn't drop too far below no shorts weather where I am. - this year is a fluke though- Where I am though, we hardly ever get snow which is something to consider as well. An hour or so north will get snow. depends on conditions if it will stick.

@North- The Logan area is a lot of small farming communities that aren't very crowded, and not too many people. The Morgan-ish area is a lot of farmland, at least where my great uncle's house is. 
There are a lot of small-town places. I'll look up names in a minute😉

North Carolina.  I lived there for a couple of years (had to move because my dad was in the military so they moved us to new bases)! It is nice there it snowed once when I lived there and it was less than an inch of snow. Schools were canceled though because it doesn't snow there usually so they didn't have salt trucks out even though it was only a few flurrys! It oesn't get to cold and gets really warm. When I lives there we uad 2 hurricanes they weren't big and it caused large puddles in our yard (which we used as a slip n' slide lol). So nothing major.
There was a tornado, a smaller one, once it did damage but not as much as you would expect. A few small stores windows broke and like 1 car flipped. So it wasn't that bad. But I heard that that one was the first in a while. We get tornado warnings but no tornados touched down There are beautiful beaches to make up for it!

South Carolina. I don't remember much from there but it was beautiful! There are palm trees (at least where I lived).

Pennsylvania. It gets cold and it snows but it isn't that bad. There are cool museums and zoos! 

Don't move to Ohio if you want to get out of the cold! It always snows and gets so cold that schools get canceled all the time, so avoid Ohio at all cost! XD

I live in the Charleston, South Carolina area right now but I grew up in central Florida. 

I will tell you that South Carolina is definitely hotter than Florida during summer because it's a higher humidity. It also stays higher humidity longer. If you're prone to bad allergies or hate being stuck in traffic, Charleston is definitely not the part of SC for you. 

Florida was my home and always will be. I was young, though, so the heat didn't bother me. As someone who likes to be at the barn all day, whenever possible, I've definitely learned how to find the coolest riding outfits humanly possible. I am someone who prefers being warm and sticky to being frozen. 

Actually, we got 5 inches of snow in Charleston yesterday. The entire city basically shut down because it's basically a lot of islands connected by bridges and all our bridges froze and no one is smart enough to handle driving on them without crashing (everyone around here are also ridiculously terrible drivers). 

I'd DEFINITELY recommend North Carolina. It's where I'll go to undergrad and I can't wait. It's basically the perfect state, in my opinion. 

Edit: I don't know if you're looking at school districts, but North Carolina is also the best for that. Not to mention friendly people. The panhandle/Jacksonville area has good schools in FL, but they're getting too many students now so they're probably declining in the past couple of years. Charleston has one good high school (like one of the top ten best in the country) but it's nearly impossible to get into unless you join right as a freshman from an amazing middle school. As for colleges, a lot of people respect the College of Charleston or MUSC (our medical university) (they're where my sister went) but I honestly don't see anything special about them. I'd still prefer my dream school, Duke, to either of them. If you're a military family, SC is probably good because we have the Citadel and it's a big part of our community. We also have Fort Jackson, where my friend actually did his training. 

Last edited on 2018-01-04 at 09:29:38 by leαн

Eastern Washington....

First a quick mod reminder to keep out the personally identifiable information, a skim showed nothing hairy yet, but since we're sharing places we live keep it general! 


California has mild winters, I'm a Northern Cali girl and it's really nice here. Rarely snow below 2,500 ft and not super cold, but there are periodic heavy storms that cause flooding and mudslides. Less of the slides more of the floods up here since it's mostly ag land and doesn't get cleared much for development (yet), there's usually only small ones in fire burned areas. The Fires are the biggest worry in the summer and late fall, where I live we're pretty used to them and well-prepared for them, but we definitely had scary ones this year, nowhere near as deadly as the Santa Rosa ones, but then being old hands defensible space and burn management is really important to everyone and there's a lot of CalFire bases and training camps up here!
Cost-wise its still fairly live-able up north, but the south and bay area are unfortunately driving up rates for the whole state so in five years time it definitely won't be a fun place to live. $15 minimum wage for everyone by 2023 sounds like a dream but it's really not for those of us in the smaller or farming communities. If I wasn't so weather spoiled and all my family wasn't in the North State I think I'd like to live somewhere else. So basically don't come to California, lol. 

The Midwest states are pretty nice, though many of them also see snow, Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota were all on a list my grandmother sent me recently for the top ten states for young people to live in based on cost of living and some other factors like job availability other amenities and housing costs. Some extended family used to live in Iowa and while it gets very cold and snowy there it's also fairly laid back and nice, but then I was only in the country while I was there! My great aunt and some of her family live in Missouri, and she loves it, and she's a rather picky lady so it must be pretty alright if she likes it xD I've also heard nice things about Idaho since one of my best friend moved there, and apparently the cold isn't as bad because it's a dry cold instead of a wet cold? I'll have to experience it to believe it but I think I can get behind that sentiment. 

And since many people mentioned it, my old basketball coach's daughter moved to North Carolina after going there for school and became a teacher, she loves it there and they've told me when they retire they're thinking about moving there because it's such a nice place to visit. 

All in all though definitely take into account the distance to the Hospitals for your kiddos if they might still have the problems when you move, but also look into the actual care they offer. I'm within an hour of about 4 small or medium hospitals and only a short life flight to UC Davis Medical Center which is the top place for anything in the North State, but I know in some places it's a lot further to get anywhere with decent care. My aunt lives in rural Nevada and when my uncle had what was probably a stroke they had to fly him 3 hours to Reno for treatment because the clinics in their area couldn't help him. So while Rural life sounds like a blast if your kiddos might need to be close to good medical care, pick the small town closest to the big city.