15 Days Until We Leave Illinois! (real estate, new home, job market)

[BIG CATS]

Originally Posted by gdsbt

Hey SickofIL....we too are from Illinois and moved here permanently in May. This is our first experience with AZ summers, but I'm like you---even though it's hot, it's nothing like a 90-degree day with 99% humidity. Also, when it storms here, it clears off and you still see the sun. We had weeks in IL where we never saw the sun. Depressing.........

Ugh. Theres no such thing as a 90-degree day with 99% humidity. Secondly, there might be a week w/o sun in IL, but thats stretching it. Winter averages 40% sunshine, 70% in summer in Chicagoland.

To the OP, I dont live in Tucson, but welcome to AZ! Lots of ex-Illinoisans here in AZ (along with every other state, seemingly). On a side note, I love Wheaton, and would have loved to live there. Personally I would never have left Wheaton to go to Tucson, but whatever floats your boat! Welcome!

[Colt AZ]

Hopefully the last remaining person in Illinois will remember to shut the barn door!

[Bummer]

Originally Posted by BIG CATS

Ugh. Theres no such thing as a 90-degree day with 99% humidity.

Are you sure about that, BIG CATS?

[sickofIL]

Maybe BIG CATS has never experienced the Chicago. I doubt that there was ever a 90 degree 99% RH day but sometimes it feels like it. We have had 90 deg days with 80% RH though. These are the days where everything is wet because the dew point is almost the temp. It is difficult to breath. There is condensation on everything.

Has BIG CATS ever been to Wheaton? I'm not sure what there is to love about it. It is a small suburb in the western Chicago suburbs that is predominately white and used to be dry. People are not friendly especially if you or your spouse is not white. There is really no difference between Wheaton or it's neighbor Winfield. If you want ANY kind of diversity don't even think of living there.

But this is just me. I don't like the people or the weather or the lack of sunlight. In the winter there are weeks without sun which really stinks if you don't like the cold. And yes, they do get weeks without sun in the summer as well. It can get very depressing. I lived there all of my life until last Saturday so I would think I would know.

And consequently, the day I moved into one of the houses that I have owned it was 116 deg F in Glendale Heights, IL. This was July 1995. Although just like here it all depends where you are in the Chicago area as to how hot it is. Temperatures vary by location sometimes very dramatically. And that 116 deg day only had RH of around 40%. That may not sound that bad but the heat index at these conditions id 155 deg.

One of the worst things about the weather there is the way the temperature can change. We have seen temperature changes of over 50 deg in a little over an hour. I distinctly remember one day in particular, I went out to lunch with some people at work and it was 70 deg. By 2:00 it was in the lower 20's. This was really great if you didn't bring a coat like me.

Then on the other side, in the 80's we had a week where the temp never went above 0. We had wind chill that year of -83. The apartment building that I lived in at the time could not get above about 48 deg inside. Fortunately I had just bought a waterbed and the heater worked great.

[cjseliga]

Originally Posted by Bummer

Are you sure about that, BIG CATS?

In order for you to have a relative humidity near 100%, you have to have a dew point equal the air temperature, so in the example of a 90-degree day with 99% humidity, you would have to have the dew point almost at 90 degrees, which would be pretty impressive. The thing with relative humidity is that it's usually highest during the morning, when the temperature is the lowest and as the day heats up and the air dries out, the humidity will go down.

So for the 90/99 scenario to happen it would have to be 90 degrees and have a 89 or so dew point around 6AM in said hypothetical place, but as the sun rose and the air dried out, the dew point will rapidly drop and by lunch time it would not be 90/99.

You hear a lot of people in Florida throw out the high temp and near 100% humidity, but in fact the humidity will never be near that high. On average the humidity for the day in Florida will be in the 73 to 76% range. Usually it will start out at 80-90% in the morning near sunrise and go down to 54-67% by 1PM.

Last month there was a story of a city in Iran, Bandar Mahshahr, that had an air temperature of 115 degrees and a dew point of 92, which made it feel like 165 degrees. That's the first time I heard of a dew point that high, now that's impressive. The highest heat index ever attained was supposedly observed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on July 8, 2003, where the heat index was 178 degrees.

[jlawrence01]

^^^
This is a thread about moving out of Illinois, not a meteorological thesis.

I am surprised at some of the responses. I have at least two neighbors here who have moved from Wheaton, IL. I guess that the public library was just not one of their major concerns. Personally, I think that the Pima County has a pretty good library system and unlike the Chicago suburbs where each town has its own library (and thousands of rural residents have NO access to a public library), all residents can head over to any of the branches.

It comes down to one thing. You can live a great lifestyle in Tucson (and most other cities in AZ) for a fraction of the cost of living in the Chicago area.

==========================================

For the record, there are things that I miss about living in Northern Illinois.

1) Many great restaurants
2) Good small college football and basketball.
3) Lack of decent grocery stores with reasonable prices.

[jlawrence01]

Originally Posted by sickofIL

I wish it was that cheap. For us it's going to be about $5800 for our stuff ( and it looks like we won't see any of it until the end of the month and it cost $1700 to ship 2 of our cars. We got the cars in one week after they picked them up. I don't know what the deal is with the movers. They said something about needing the right truck going to AZ and it is a very busy season.

That sounds like a very good deal on the move to AZ. We paid $7800 for the weight and mileage and another $900 for storage as our goods had to stay in Chicago awaiting a truck to AZ.

[cjseliga]

Originally Posted by jlawrence01

^^^
This is a thread about moving out of Illinois, not a meteorological thesis.

You've been on here since October of '08 and have over 10,000 posts, you should know by now what happens to threads on City-Data.

[Saguarogirl507]

But i did learn many things about humidity that I did not know. Sometimes hijacking the thread is ok if it is educational like that. In my opinion

[sickofIL]

One store we already miss is Aldi. I haven't found any place here like that. Aldi had very good prices on everything and also has their own brand. They have the best price on milk, usually around $2/gal, they had the best price for my favorite frozen pizza, Home Run Inn.

I was told by one of the owners (of Home Run Inn--he is in the Chicago area Corvette ZR1 club) that these are sold at Sprouts Farmers Market. I need to check it out.