I'm reading an Atlantic article that purports to answer the question I've been asking: "Why People Won’t Stop Moving to the Sun Belt."
But does this article really know why people do what they do? The author gives us 3 reasons: 1. cheap housing, 2. "a 'business-friendly' environment," and 3. warm winters. That is, on point 3, the weather is still a reason to go there, not a reason to escape. Ah, well, the fear of the cold is deep-seated.
Here I am, lying on a nearly empty beach on the shore of Lake Superior, on August 14th, wearing 2 layers of long-sleeved shirt, experiencing what to me is the perfect temperature — 62°:
Why isn't everyone here? Ah, well, I like the emptiness. The sand was very fine and soft, the water perfectly clear... and swimmable if you're hale and exuberant.
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Super shot! You gotta get that one framed.
4. It's not the hellscape the author is pushing down our throats.
Winter is the reason people won’t stop moving to the sunbelt. It’s that simple, right?
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Northern (Blue) states have been losing their economic futures to the Sun Belt since the 1960s. Way back then many ambitious people left the Rust Belt states and moved to California. Today, northerners are moving to Florida and Texas. This isn't new.
Humans were initially a tropical species from Africa, with a sweat and temperature control physiology as good or better than all other land species. We had to take the skins and insulation from other animals (leather, furs, feathers, wool) to survive winters in the cold. Returning to a warm habitat is thereby likely instinctive and certainly more eco friendly than needing clothes and heating to survive winter. I thought they were pro-environment?
A lot of this stuff sounds like they are trying to suggest that the entire Sun Belt is Phoenix, and that the entire year is Phoenix in July.
Yes, it's hot. But by these same standards, surely children in the north are spending large parts of the winter inside, 'trying to survive'. Surely toddlers in Maine or Michigan are suffering frostbite if they wander out into the snow barefoot. Sorority girls in Minnesota or New York are having the heat transfered from their bodies when they just want to show off in a cute dress in December...
Does she mention that the Sun Belt is basically a dual, bilingual culture? Maybe people just like diversity, unlimited Modelo, and a package of saladitos at the checkout register.
I'm a Yooper by birth and can remember swimming in Superior in June and watching ice floes float by in the channel. A bit nippy to say the least...
Don't move down here. There are snakes, bugs, and all kinds of dangerous creatures. The humidity makes sweat drip off your nose just leaning over. It's horrible.
~This has been a public service announcement for Yankees
I want every Atlantic reader to believe this stuff and to never, ever move to Texas. Tell them all it's horrible here, people are dying in the streets from the heat, whatever it takes, just keep them away. Don't forget to frighten them with hurricane season as well, while you're at it.
I lived in Florida for one year and three hundred and fifty eight days when I got out of grad school. One of the reasons Imdid not like it was the weather. When you see a Santa Clause ringing a bell the weather should be such that you need a coat.
As I have aged I have found the Atlanta summers disagreeable. The best day of the year is in October when the weather breaks.
So if a blackout occurs the city might resemble San Francisco? The 181 "heat related" deaths in Maracopa county, it least they were "not the vaxx"; or Covid. This from Rolling Stone, who did that wonderful report on rape at UVA.
okay, serious question.. WHAT would happen to a toddler, if it walked barefoot across the parkinglot .. in Madison, in January?
Once Natural Gas is criminalized, How would a blackout affect people in Buffalo NY if it happened in January?
Finally. Currently, worldwide; how do deaths from summer compare to deaths from winter? In the USA?
"the fear of the cold is deep-seated"
A rational fear, considering that cold kills more people.
Question: what will progs prohibit first--heating in the North or AC in the South?
Some years back, I left my car in an outdoor parking lot on Concord, CA. Came back to find the rear view mirror hanging from a cord. The heat had melted it from the windshield.
It really is about the winters. My sister in SoCal says she thinks where I live in NE WI seems so lovely but she couldn’t deal with winter.
In February here in North East Florida - part of the Old South - the temps will be 38°F at 7am. By 10 am they're 62°F on the sand at the beach and this retired school teacher is surfing in 62°F water under a beautiful sunrise. The beaches are for most part empty on ever of a Tuesday morning except for surfers and the assorted walkers. The sun is now up over the Atlantic and by noon it's 70°F. At home I'll putter around gardening my blooming 40+ blooming azalea bushes in my live oak forest along the St Johns River. By 5pm the temps are up to 73°F and we're having a beer on the patio - in shorts and surfer baggies - watching the sun set over the river. Birds from up north everywhere. Those months with the letter "R" in them make up for every day in August that mimics the front porch of hell.
I assume there are no sand fleas where you are.
How silly of me. If there were, you wouldn't be there doing what you're doing.
I was raised in the North, central Illinois, where the winters are cold and the summers can be hot. I had two sisters, endomorphic, who loved winter and hated summer. I and my other sister, ectomorphic, painfully suffer in cold weather and we have settled in Florida. I've been here 37 years and love it.
Diff'rent Strokes.
Seriously, If:
It's January..
And you take a toddler in its diaper...
And you place it outside for the day...
When you go out at 5pm, to pick it up..
Will it be frozen Clear Through? Or just on the outside? It will SURELY be DEAD
Once again, these hot sidewalks are from incoming solar radiation, unaffected by greenhouse gases.
They bank on having stupid readers.
Ignore the fact that ordinary people are fleeing Soros-Soviet crime-ridden blue state(D) unfriendly trashed hell-holes.
Up next on Microsoft NBC: A list of all the horrid southern red states. LOL.
It is too hot for anyone to live here. Even the immigrants that are escaping tyranny and oppression don’t want to live here. That’s why we try to help them move to cooler northern climates.
My friends who go to the UP say that Lake Superior is OK because you don't stay in it long enough to get wet.
Lake Michigan is more civilized, particularly in the dune country.
heat and cold make leftists cry. Everything should be perfect Camelot for the delicate Soviets.
I tried swimming in Lake Superior once when I was in my late 30s. It was the kind of bracing experience I decided I never wanted again.
You look drunk. Or dead. It doesn’t look that appealing to me. But what do I know.
Living in the north especially the northeast is hard. Living in the south, Florida for example it is easier. I think people feel wanted. Some of those northern states, it is as if people are to be taxed and regulated out of existence.
Let’s compare apples to apples. Both FL and CA have generally mild weather and both historically experienced uninterrupted growth of population. Not anymore. There is no longer a large beautiful city here on the left coast one can use as an unquestionably nice place to live. People are fleeing in larger numbers than ever and this decline has happened over a rather short time. Thumb sucking articles about scorching sidewalks aren’t getting anywhere near the root causes of this precipitous decline.
The clowns at The Atlantic are heavily invested in the idea that people in the South are stupid. I mean, they voted for Trump and all.
The truth is, 3 months of hot weather is a fair trade for 4-5 months of sometimes brutal hardship. I grew up well above the 40th parallel, and while summers were blissful (bugs aside), the winters became difficult around late Feb and March, with the extremely short days, the bitter cold, and the terrible, muddy, and the glare ice. It's the culmination of every winter, where a little snow melts every day only to freeze back into glare ice at night, in all the worst places - driveways, sidewalks, and streets. Although I loved winter, and at times miss it, nostalgically - I used to snowshoe hike & camp - even this summer's oppressive heat streak is more constructively bearable.
I never knew I lived in such daunting circumstances.
My kids come home from school and go play outside until dinner. I should tell them to stop because they're just trying to survive. Yeah they come in all sweaty, just terrible.
"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a Black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."
Well, you look hot as always, Professor.
I lived for a decade in Maryland, and thanks to the winters it seemed like a full century. I never want to live further north. Now I live in Texas and keep my snow in Colorado, on the ski slopes. I can visit it every year without suffering from it.
Temperatures have been over 105F every day for about a month now, a record, likely due to that Pacific volcano and all the water it put in the stratosphere. But the mornings are pleasant, and the community pool is delightful after 6:00pm. We hydrate and avoid sunstroke and continue living. And we don't let our toddlers go barefoot on hot asphalt, because we are neither monsters nor idiots.
Ann- Here I am, lying on a nearly empty beach on the shore of Lake Superior, on August 14th, wearing 2 layers of long-sleeved shirt, experiencing what to me is the perfect temperature — 62°
Then you'd prolly like the Florida panhandle in January to get out of the worst of the winter in the great white north. Panama City Beach has an average daily high of 64 in January. And it is 67 in December and February. And 73 in November and March.
@Vonnegan 0754:
You forgot to mention all the people carrying guns. Texas is coming up on 2 years of Constitutional Carry. Any Texas can walk into a gun store, put down his or her money, and walk out with a gun (unless you're on a government list...). Shootouts in the streets. Blood in the gutters.
Also, open season on LGBTXYZ+... There's a bounty on 'em.
My ultimate goal is to become a snow bird. Best of both worlds.
"When it gets hot enough, as it has across the South in recent weeks, barefoot toddlers suffer second-degree burns from stepping onto concrete. People who fall on the blistering pavement wind up with skin grafts. Kids stay inside all day, 'trying to survive.' Windshield wipers glue themselves in place, and the ocean transfers heat back into your body. One electric blackout could bake thousands to death inside their homes.”
Althouse actually believes that hyperbole published in The Atlantic might be somewhere in the neighborhood of the truth. How quaint. Yes, kids stay indoors down here, but probably for much the same reason as kids further north — cell phones and video games. For the record, todays ocean temperatures in Virginia Beach and Miami Beach are 79.5 and 86.4 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. If the ocean is transferring heat into your body then it’s because you are clinically dead.
Ah, well, the fear of the cold is deep-seated.
Did you never study human evolution? Our species evolved on the savannahs of Africa; we freeze to death much more easily than we die of heat stroke.
"Why isn't everone here?"
Shhh. Hush. Because then those wonderful abandoned beaches would be filled with idoits trying to swim in 45deg. water. It's one of the few places on the Great Lakes that you can park and go camping on the beach. I'm still pissed that people dicovered that the black sand held gold.
Come to think of it, rwnutjob and Vonnegan are absolutely correct. Don’t you crazy-voting Northern women move down here. We have dangerous snakes like copperheads and water moccasins and coral snakes and all sorts of rattlesnakes. Down in Florida and Georgia there are cockroaches the size of New York City’s rats. And alligators!
Stay up North and freeze to death in the dark, which is what you voted for.
It's hot in the winter too. I've seen temps in the mid 90s during December. Worst of all, men will wear shorts, even in winter. The only best world is up north where they welcome immigrants, allow abortions, and will say the word "gay". Better schools up there too, with libraries that don't ban books. People in the south are crazy. They'll get on cruise ships that go even further south where it is even hotter and more humid. No wonder they don't seem to understand the dangers of climate change.
Yes, East and Northern states during summer seasons and South and West during the winter. SNOWBIRD the way to go. If you have had 65 years or so in Labor force, have a strong SS stipend should be no problem if you paid attention. (Maybe few good hits at the Track) Heat and Warmth for old bones and cool for comfort (not too cool) for chillin. Life is short do it! :)
I remember as a kid in Southern California in the 50s people frying eggs on the sidewalks. Atlantic is, as always, on top of stuff. For lefties history is 20 years.
It's weird that I keep hearing how this is the worst and hottest summer ever. I live in DC where we've had just 19 days to date at 90F or over. In 2016 by Aug 16, we had 40 days over 90F (including 4 days at 100F or over)
Anyway enjoy the sun and the nice weather.
I'll send you a photo of me lying in the sand on Siesta Key in January. It'll be clear.
It literally seems like no one from The Atlantic has traveled further south than Alexandria, VA or further west than Middleburg, VA. It's actually comical how most people in the north and east, who have never spent time in the South, still view the South. Comical, and tiresome.
At this point, it should not be a mystery why so many people continue to move to the southwest and southeast.
1) Yes- the weather. We know it's going to be hot in the summer (who knew?). We can live with it, despite the worst headlines since the Hindenburg disaster. But...for most of the year its beautiful. At least it is here on the Suncoast of Florida.
2) The people. At least in the southeast- the people are wonderful. Seriously. More polite (as a rule), more hospitable (as a rule). More friendly (as a rule). I say 'as a rule' because we've been inundated with Northeasterners and that could have an impact.
3) Economics. It's more free market here than it is in Blue states. It's less regulation heavy. Easier to open a business. Easier to keep more of the fruits of your own labor.
4) Crime. Compare the streets of the major cities down here vs San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Baltimore, DC, etc. 'Nuff said.
5) Other: Would you rather live in Gavin Newsomville, or DeSantisville? You'll be able to vote on it in Nov 2024. Be careful what you vote for, and do your own homework. Don't go by those headline writers. You might just find yourself living in San Francisco.
"Finally. Currently, worldwide; how do deaths from summer compare to deaths from winter? In the USA?"
You can see that here. Whoever put together THE MOST DISHONEST CLIMATE CHART EVER certainly went to some trouble to hide the comparison.
I'm guessing whoever did it is a "global boiling" climate alarmist. What do you think?
Keep celebrating that cold weather, Ann. Tucson has had one day under 100 degrees this month. You and your Madison WI friends would not like it here. Two years ago we had 125 degrees for two weeks. Way too many lefties coming down here. We even had a rattlesnake in our bedroom a couple of weeks ago. All you lefty commenters, like puddinghead and Freder stay away from Arizona. It's too dangerous. Guns and other scary stuff.
I'm surprised no one has yet asked the question: was Meade feeling hale and exuberant?
and swimmable if you're hale and exuberant.
But, but, but SHRINKAGE!
I'm hale and harty but not exuberant. Which means I don't swimming in cold water. Fresh or salt.
The obvious solution is to live in Texas and escape to the North Pole during summer.
This is a coordinated effort to convince us to panic and surrender more control of our lives to experts. The problem is the boy has cried wolf once too often recently. There is also the angst of the newly arrived who don't know how to live in warmer climates, yet. Then comes the winter when the figure out they were stupid to bring their snow shovel, you don't need it (even if it snows because hot weather cities basically shut down if it snows).
As I tell business friends who ask how I can tolerate the heat: I've never had to shovel a bucket of heat.
So what inspired this absurdly ignorant philippic against the Great Southward Migration? A veritable hailstorm of emails and texts from Democratic governors and mayors is my inspired guess.
We're losing taxpayers to the red states, was their heartfelt cry. We can't establish the Marxist paradise with only useless eaters and thieves. We need fleecible kulaks, but they're moving beyond our clutches, damn their independent minds!
But you've still got the Silicon Valley billionaires, countered the Atlantic mastheaders.
Not nearly enough since the rise of Evil Elon, moaned the apparatchiks. Besides, these people can afford cunning accountants and creative tax lawyers. What we need are well-off sheep, workers with wealth fit to plunder but untempting to scornful pettifoggers. We need Trump voters, damn it! Rescue us!
How about blistered baby feet, suggested the scribblers?
That could work, the Maoist mayors mused. But what if they buy toddler shoes with their increased after-tax income? Drat that Lenin! Why didn't he warm us about revolution from above?
Stay away from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, too. I have been cooking my breakfast on the hood of the car since late February, and the dead from heatstroke on the sidewalk are reaching 4 deep right about now- we only scoop them up for disposal after the heat abates in late February.
Big Mike said...
"Come to think of it, rwnutjob and Vonnegan are absolutely correct. Don’t you crazy-voting Northern women move down here. We have dangerous snakes like copperheads and water moccasins and coral snakes and all sorts of rattlesnakes. Down in Florida and Georgia there are cockroaches the size of New York City’s rats. And alligators!"
While driving from West Palm Beach toward home, on a state road in North Central Florida, I saw signs for 'Panther Crossing.' So add mountain lions to the list. Didn't see one on that drive, but they're sneaky...
"hale and exuberant"
Never been to Lake Superior. But it sounds like Maine, where 'hale' is what you'd better be if you are planning on taking a dip; and 'exuberant' describes how you'll feel once you're back on shore.
Sorry, but no. Yesterday we were at the lake fishing all morning as the temperature rose from 70 to 78. The water was a very comfortable 84. That is ideal August temperatures in for Tennessee. Water temperature a little below average, air temperature a little below average. The weather all this year has been moderate, with a few very cold days early on, a warmer than normal May, a cooler than normal June, a hot July and early August, and heading into 8 weeks or so of ideal weather it looks like.
"I went to Michigan and all I got was SAD"
How else does one teach Texas toddlers not to walk barefoot on concrete in the summer. They never forget. Same with touching hot stoves.
We've had the coolest spring in my memory; several friends lost entire months of growing cash crops, though the mass adaptation of cheap greed houses are a great technological improvement, yet the papers are still freaking out about the heat.
Okra doesn't lie. I think.
Greenhouses, not greed houses, you Amazon beast.
“Yes, East and Northern states during summer seasons and South and West during the winter. SNOWBIRD the way to go. If you have had 65 years or so in Labor force, have a strong SS stipend should be no problem if you paid attention. (Maybe few good hits at the Track) Heat and Warmth for old bones and cool for comfort (not too cool) for chillin. Life is short do it! :)”
For us, it is MT and AZ, split evenly down the middle. We seem to catch the first snowstorm of the year on the way out of MT, and sometimes the last of the year on the way back. Meanwhile, last spring, I only had one or two days walking the dog, where she started “shading” (catching some shade laying down and cooking off, before we could proceed) around noon. And only a couple weeks when I really couldn’t wear a jacket (to kinda hide my you know what for the resident pack of coyotes). One of the nice things about AZ is that it is biculteral - which means good Mexican food, and cheap labor.
"Ah, well, the fear of the cold is deep-seated."
With reason enough. It kills more people than heat. No great ratio but more.
The facts are that cold weather kills many more people - in the US roughly 10x more - than hot weather. Unsurprisingly, people are moving where the weather is less likely to kill you.
Of course, that's not the only reason to move to the West or the Sun Belt from the northern Midwest or Northeastern US, but it's also not trivial.
People move to the South to wear shorts and getaway from anti-shorts neighbors.
I would be extremely uncomfortable at 62 degrees. I actually have to take a jacket to the movie theater because the air conditioning is usually too cold for me.
I like it at 75 degrees or above.
I grew up in southwest Louisiana, specifically DeRidder. No hotter now than it was then. Ran about with no shoes including on the asphalt street without getting burned. Got on my bike with cleated pedals no shoes. Hell, when the city attempted to patch up the cracks in the asphalt with tar, after the tar cooled for a day, we boys would pull out our Matchbox cars and play in the middle of the street using the tar as roads. Different time now I know, but my mother knew I was ok.
It's just a part of the fabric of reality--it's easier and cheaper to cool a hot place than heat a cold one.
As a Southron born and bred, I have to say that without AC I'd be looking at cooler climes--at least for half the year. It's a continuous source of wonderment to me that my north German grandparents landed in pre-AC Memphis and stayed. Ceiling fans and sleeping porches wouldn't be enough for me.
Anyone here remember the "Summer of Death" in Chicago. If I recall correctly, it was n the late 70's and turned out to be mostly media hype.
Here in Tucson, when it rains, the water is so hot it boils. Stay away!
It's amazing how so many journalists suddenly discovered that summer is hot and that pavement can get even hotter. The old scare tactics must not have been working fast enough.
I like the weather where we live. I like the change of seasons. I just wish we had better politicians the ones we have are pretty sucky. Actually no politicians would be best.
Tina Trent said...
"We've had the coolest spring in my memory; several friends lost entire months of growing cash crops, though the mass adaptation of cheap greed houses are a great technological improvement, yet the papers are still freaking out about the heat.
Okra doesn't lie. I think."
At least for the upper miwest this is going to bew one of the coldest summers in a long time.
Cold kills way more people than heat. But that is inconvenient to acknowledge.
I left Boston because antifa smashed the lobby windows in my building and the DA said that was a okay with her. I wanted to leave two years prior when the DA was elected. The window made my wife tap out...
My parents left Vermont because they were being strangled with taxes. That and their neighbors were tiny house living lefties. the run of Seven generations of Vermonters in my family will end because of this...
Where Ann was is too far to drive and too risky to try and fly. More for Ann. I'll remember the fun you had when you're all freezing your tits off in February...
I was 400 miles north of Madison, so any comments about how cold Madison must be in the winter don't really apply. It's got to be much colder 400 miles north!
If you go 400 miles south of Madison, you'd get to Louisville, KY or Kansas City, MO.
But would I go north 400 miles in the winter? I might worry about the safety of the roads, but basically, there's a lot to do. There's plenty of snow for cross-country skiing, and there's even some downhill skiing. People do snow bikes. And I learned what a 2x2 is.
I'm actually not trying to encourage people to go where I was. I'm just commenting on human behavior. The place was great the way it was. We casually found dispersed camping. No reservations.
We are heading to Montana for our summer vacation, next week. It is much cooler there than here, near Richmond, VA. I would like nothing better than to have the temperature below 70 degrees all year round. My wife would like nothing better than to have the temperature over 70 degrees all year round.
Compromises.
It's got to be much colder 400 miles north!
Unless you are right next to a chilly (but relatively warm) Lake.
All-time record low in Madison: -37F. All-time record low in Marquette MI: -33.
In February 1996 it was -24. It was -29 in Madison (high of -14) that day. That was a cold day.
I'm just going to stay in Ohio. F--- all y'all.
I'm sick of the news running constant articles about how it's hot in summer. That isn't new and certainly isn't news.
I'm late to the party, but let me give fair warning of the hell of living in Alabamistan.
Skeeters that can stand flat footed and breed with a robin. The only things holding back the snake population are snake eating snakes and alligators.
Burnt feet? Feh. That toddler would bake to a crispy golden brown and expire before his feet ever had a chance to reach asphalt.
Plus it's so very hard to keep those Klan robes sparkling white, especially since those Commies in Congress took away our God given right to phosphates in our laundry detergent.
Ann Althouse said, "
"But would I go north 400 miles in the winter? I might worry about the safety of the roads, but basically, there's a lot to do. There's plenty of snow for cross-country skiing, and there's even some downhill skiing. People do snow bikes. And I learned what a 2x2 is."
A lot of those palces make most of their money from September till April. September is bear season and good luck finding an empty motel room. After that is deer season then snowmobiles and sking till the snow melts.
I remember vinyl station wagon seats that would elicit a sizzle from a wet swimsuit in the summer.
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