Americans Moving to Florida?
- Thread starter Harvey
- Start date
Arizona, New Mexico and the Colorado mountains are places that I believe have many retirees.
Patrick
Well-known member
Many Canadians (called Snowbirds) spend Winter in Florida and a bit in Arizona.
jamesdeluxe
Administrator
Interesting to learn the (military) origin of the term "snowbird."
jamesdeluxe
Administrator
@jasoncapecod claims otherwise!
jamesdeluxe
Administrator
So you'll sell the Rockland County house and live between Cape Cod and Florida?
Where is there mtn biking in Florida?
jamesdeluxe
Administrator
My father lived in Florida for a more than decade, then moved to South Carolina. That's how I learned the term "halfback."
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
MTB..a subject i'm well versed on...I have biked coast to coast. Florida has some of the gnarliest biking in the country..yep I said Florida.. I have had my worst crashes and injuries biking there. Yes the biking is relatively flat , but the builders do some incredible things with the terrain they have.
Here are the main systems. Santo's and Alfia in Central Fla just north of Orlando. There are actual hills there. In South Fla the main place is Markham Park..
On the occasions that I find myself in Florida, I am usually in the Delray to Boca area. Is there anything in that region?
Hawaii is probably the most expensive state in the US to live. Even for vacationers, I think most of them are from the West Coast. I'll guess that Arizona is next most popular to retire after Florida.
I guess Liz' mother was a variation on James' "halfback." I suspect summers in the Carolinas are as obnoxious as Florida except for the western mountain microclimate that is cloudy nearly all the time. I'm inclined to think that since the summers suck all along the East Coast at least as far north as NYC, there some logic in going all the way south to where the 6-7 cooler months are nicest. I do believe that the DC to Carolina climate has much longer pleasant springs and autumns than NY/NJ. It seemed that some NJ springs/falls when I was there lasted about a week.
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
Yes
Markham is 45 mins from delray
And is worth the trip. There is an onsite bike rental too. They rented decent bikes.
My mother decided to move to central North Carolina from NYC back in the early 1970s. She was ahead of the migration of retirees from the northeast and midwest to NC. Those numbers started increasing in the 1990s. The relatively long spring and fall seasons were a factor. She also appreciated having four seasons, which can't be said of FL. I moved with her and my father joined us after he retired several years later. I've been in the NC Triangle ever since.
Summers in NC are NOT like summers in FL. In the Piedmont, as central NC is called, it's much more likely to cool down in at night even when daytime temps are in the 80s or 90s. While it doesn't snow often in Raleigh, it can happen once or twice a winter.
Worst summer nights I've experience on the east coast were in Boston. It was back in the 1990s and I was staying in older places with no A/C, which is pretty common. The high humidity was worse than NYC. My childhood bedroom didn't have A/C either.
Florida is #1. Apparently in 2023, South Carolina was #2.
January 2024
Top 5 States Where Retirees Are Moving
South Carolina gained on Florida as retirement relocations took a big jump in 2023
www.aarp.org
EMSC
Well-known member
Don't hold back Tony, LOL.
It's not really any better for lots of the Midwest either for what that is worth.
MarzNC, Very weird looking list IMO. Id bet if that were a 5 or 10 year look vs just one that it would look somewhat different than that.
I would guess the pandemic shifted both the departure and arrival states a bit. Wild fires in the last 5-6 years are a factor for people leaving California.
I wonder if NY's loss was one aspect of NJ's gain in 2023.
In any case, here is an article that turned up that has a list of cities. Where I live, Raleigh, NC is one of the arrival cities for retirees over 60. Of course, the relevance of any analysis depends on the data source. The data used was from 2021.
April 2023
Where Retirees Are Moving – 2023 Study - SmartAsset | SmartAsset
We used Census Bureau data to compare the number of people age 60 and older who moved into a state or city to the number of seniors who moved out.
smartasset.com
jamesdeluxe
Administrator
I'm sure I've mentioned before that within a year of moving to CU Boulder in 1982 (where at the time almost a quarter of the student body was from California) I realised that people who lived in sunny regions often engaged in a type of group bonding/performance art -- complaining at length about how HORRIBLE and INTOLERABLE weather was outside of the sunbelt. To be fair, in many cases the most vociferous ones were transplants, who'd regale you chapter and verse about what a fabulously smart choice it was to move to CO, AZ, CA, FL, etc. and that they only went home for funerals or other major life events.
I wasn't there and can't fact-check your personal experience/perception; however, that ^^ has not been my experience here across two decades and suspect that this may be a performative tall tale.
Personally, 300+ sunny days a year gets old quick, similar to that amount of gray days but hey, everyone's mileage varies.
Spring of my senior year was very nice, one of the few times I dabbled with golf. It was about 6 weeks and I had the gut feeling that was a long time vs. the prior 3 years.
I did not understand why Liz' mother enjoyed those summers in Waynesville until I spent a July week there myself. From my perspective I just saw the altitude 2,000 feet and thought that's not nearly enough to put a dent in the heat and humidity. But I was wrong. The cloudy microclimate keeps the average highs in the low 80's. I was also surprised the lows were in the low 60's. Maybe some of that cooler air in the mountains flows down into the Piedmont at night.
Sounds like my 2013 week in NYC. I'm sure the worst place to be in high heat/humidity is a big city with urban heat island added in. For truly insane urban heat/humidity try Shanghai. I think the temperature range was 95/77 when I was there in 2008.
It's not the sun per se. The cloudiness tends to go hand in hand with the humidity, which makes both warm and cold extremes more unpleasant. Note that the cloudiness is a huge positive factor for the Smoky Mountain summer climate I described above. It's fairly simple I think. Is it comfortable to be outside, whether exercising or just taking in a ball game or concert?
And if it's raining constantly as during my college years (NYC had about 135% of normal rain those years) people don't want to be outside much then either. So I'll take Florida's intense but brief downpours over day after day of mist and drizzle.
To a point, we skiers know that cold comfort can be managed by clothing. Nothing makes high temperature humidity comfortable other than going inside to the A/C or getting in the water. Trade winds on tropical islands help a lot too, but of course summer is mostly the no wind season on the East Coast (a lament of windsurfers).
Last edited:
If you can afford it and don't mind that it's 5 hour flight anywhere else. Much of Hawaii is remarkably comfortable in summer on the leeward sides of their large mountains with less rain and humidity. I was there a week in August 2011 in a Waikiki highrise and we never needed the A/C due to the trade winds.
Don't get me wrong. I personally have zero ambition to move to a beach type location. But I guess I'm not the norm.
Hawaii sounds like a nice spot to visit for a look though. The Pearl Harbour history is a particular attraction to me.