West Coast to East Coast - Living Inquiry (New London: rental, appliances)
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Weatherwise, ,moving from NY to NH is one thing. Moving from SoCal to NH is another thing entirely. I would encourage people who are considering a move here from other climate zones to spend a week here in Feb. before making a commitment.
I've spent enough weeks during summer in the deep south to know I would never want to move there. Guess the same thing applies to winter in the Northeast.
Someone from a temperate climate needs to spend a good amount of time in the Northern New England winter. We had friends from Atlanta staying with us for that Thanksgiving snow storm a few years ago. We lost power for three days, lot's of (big) tree limbs down...
The wife of the couple was standing in my driveway in her fuzzy slippers, as I was running the snow blower and chainsaw. She had a giant goofy grin on her face, snapping pictures with her iPhone.
Two days later, she was back in 70° Hotlanta, and I was still listening to the hum of the generator, knowing that winter hadn't even begun yet.
Used to have power go out regularly when I was in DC. We lost it both from thunderstorms and from snow/ice storms. NH does not have a corner on power loss.
The experience will be much different in the Northern parts of the state. Maybe I'm just a freak of nature, but in the 11 years I've been here, it hasn't seemed all that different that NJ & NY, where I grew up...
Up here, yes, it is MUCH different. I'm a good 2 hours drive north of you in Nashua.
I remember we had some bad weather in NY (when you got snow due to the ocean effect, you got SNOW) but winter is much longer and darker up here. Also it is colder, of course.
I think the contributing factor is that you really need to budget for winter as these old rental apartments (you can do more with your own home than a rental) are drafty and not built for the sort of weather we get. In the places I've lived in NH there is a severe lack of insulation and few apartments I've rented had storm windows.
The landlord is not interested in that sort of thing when you rent and pay your own heat. It's something to consider in any northern city.
If you've never lived here before I don't think there is any way to know exactly what you're in for until you've actually lived it. No amount of research or internet people's opinions, warnings or anything can do it justice. Being in the environment day to day for months at a time and experiencing the feel firsthand is the ONLY way. Going to work, doing your grocery shopping, running errands, partaking in the outdoor recreation, physically shoveling the snow, looking at the filth on your car for months and knowing any attempt at cleaning it is futile, leaving for work in the early morning and sitting in your car as it warms up in below zero temps, for weeks and weeks and months, driving home from work in a white out blizzard, seeing cars abandoned on the side of the road, not knowing if you're actually on the offramp or if your heading into a ditch. Nobody can fully understand unless they've lived it. CAN you deal with it? Are you WILLING to deal with it long term? Everyone's tolorance is different and you will only figure it out once you've lived it.
For us, the reason we chose NH over all other New England states is because we loved miu so much. J/K.. miu is cool despite the many disagreements we've had over time. I got nothing but love!
Seriously though, aside from being beautiful country the most appealing things about NH were the lack of taxes (of course), the libertarian views and the fact that people from NH are proud. Never have I experienced or heard of people being so proud of their state and that was appealing to us. Very patriotic as well. I have great respect for that.
It is sad actually that we came to the realization that NH is not for us. I wanted to like it. I tried hard to like it. And many things about it I do like, but the few things I don't care for outweighed all else. I am proud to say that we lived here even though it was for a brief period of time. We gave it a shot and therefore have no regrets.
This is the same exact way we feel about our move here a year ago. We really wanted to like NH and are still giving it another year. Best of luck in FL!!!
This is the same exact way we feel about our move here a year ago. We really wanted to like NH and are still giving it another year. Best of luck in FL!!!
About the power outages in winter, it's not so bad to lose power in the south but you lose it here and you might lose your heat and could freeze to death. People with wood stoves or generators are usually okay but a regular fireplace does just about nothing.
If the snow blows and drifts up over your door, you can't get out of the house. If the phone lines are down and you live in an area with no cell phone coverage, you can't call for help.
You probably won't be able to cook so it can get pretty bad. Some people are really well prepared to rough it but others, especially people in poorly insulated rentals, can't do much on their own behalf.
It's a long, dark, cold, boring winter. Many people stay close to home rather then drive far on hilly, icy roads. Snow is pretty at first but it gets old fast. Dirty, brown, dried out, dead snow.
Sheesh, I sound like I should be moving to the south but I wouldn't do that in a million years. New England blood all the way here, believe it or not.
About the power outages in winter, it's not so bad to lose power in the south but you lose it here and you might lose your heat and could freeze to death. People with wood stoves or generators are usually okay but a regular fireplace does just about nothing.
If the snow blows and drifts up over your door, you can't get out of the house. If the phone lines are down and you live in an area with no cell phone coverage, you can't call for help.
You probably won't be able to cook so it can get pretty bad. Some people are really well prepared to rough it but others, especially people in poorly insulated rentals, can't do much on their own behalf.
It's a long, dark, cold, boring winter. Many people stay close to home rather then drive far on hilly, icy roads. Snow is pretty at first but it gets old fast. Dirty, brown, dried out, dead snow.
Sheesh, I sound like I should be moving to the south but I wouldn't do that in a million years. New England blood all the way here, believe it or not.
does the snow really get high enough to block your door in Northern New England?? I live in Rhode Island and that never happens here.
does the snow really get high enough to block your door in Northern New England?? I live in Rhode Island and that never happens here.
The 2015 Winter season was pretty bad here. There was a stretch of month or six weeks there where we we getting a huge snow storm every week. One in particular, we had something like 40" dumped in 24 hours in Southern New Hampshire. Depending on which way your door is oriented, you very easily could have had drifts of snow blocking it (I didn't, but my car was pretty much completely buried).
One of the local barns had a picture out of big, sliding barn door of a huge bank of snow with a horse standing in front of it, the handler trying to figure out how the heck they were going to lead the horse out (this was in Groton, MA).
I don't know if it is typical North of here, but in the 11 years I've lived here, I feel like that was maybe the worst Winter, snow-wise. Other years have been bad because of ice storms, or wind, or cold temps or other various things, but that is the one that sticks in my mind for snow.
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