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We don't get snow here and not much ice -south Texas.
It can get chilly. A few days of freezing weather. This year I have really enjoyed the cold. Well right now it is a freakish 75 degrees! Some people have their AC turned on. Not us. A nice 65 degrees would be ideal. I like winter clothing. I think I have more winter stuff than summer~ And summer lasts a long time.
The slippery parking lots and sidewalks are my downside. There’s not much traffic where I live, the plows do a great job on the few streets I need to travel, and we have a great hired snowplow driver for our own driveway. I do have arthritis, but I can never tell that climate makes it better or worse. Being retired, if it’s really bad, I can just stay in. So slippery walkways that stay slippery for days at a time are the only thing that really bothers me.
I deal with it in two ways. A year after moving in, we put in a sidewalk and handrail for the short outdoor walk from the house to the garage. We had hot water plumbing laid under the sidewalk, but didn’t activate it yet, as my housemate felt comfortable shoveling. Recently, we decided to hook it up this next summer for next year. The sidewalk and handrail make it so much more secure to walk between the house and the car.
But then there’s walking from the car into the library or grocery store or restaurant or post office. And when I visit my folks in winter, the icy hotel parking lot. Three years ago, I had a knee replacement, and in the few weeks of using a walker, it occurred to me that the walker is really stabilizing. So I keep it in the trunk in the winter, and whenever I have to walk from the car over an icy path, out it comes. Using that has made a huge difference to my confidence in going out in the winter. Good boots and ice cleats help too.
I used to hate winter with a passion. Grew up in northern Iowa and I was cold all the time. Summers were way too short.
As an adult, I moved much further south, where winters weren't nearly as long or cold, but I still hated them. Summers were longer and days of heaven.
Now, in my sixties, I hate summers almost as much as I used to hate winter. I don't handle the heat well, and the longer daylight hours trigger anxiety and I get terribly depressed.
Don't know what the answer is, but but it definitely isn't moving back north. My husband thinks Hawaii would be perfect but we don't have the funds to visit, much less move there.
Be careful of what you wish for, Once the kids moved on, sold the big house, bought a condo up North for Summer, and one in Florida. After five years as Snowbirds, decided to stay year round in Florida, lasted Three years, couldn’t take the H/H in Summer, tired of putting up hurricane shutters season after season in 90+ degree temps, moved to the mountains of Western NC, ahh, relief!
It took me twenty years in south Florida to thaw out from growing up in Vermont. Riding a bike in sub-zero weather delivering papers sensitized me. This area is about as close as I'll get to climate that I like. A lot of cold sensitivity is thyroid related, but shows up normal on tests. You just have to take the lowest dose and figure out how it affects you.
After spending most of my adult life in MD, I moved to VT in retirement ...
And after spending most of my adult life in MD/DC/VA, and after retiring in 2008, I moved to Maine four years ago with my wife.
Yes, the winters are long and they are cold. Last winter we hit -21 degrees here, and that's been the coldest I've ever experienced. My sister - who retired to Vermont many years ago - usually has a significantly colder stretch than that at least once or twice each winter.
But, knowing it's going to be cold, and snowy, we just do what everyone here does ... we get ready for winter. We dress appropriately when we go outside, we prepare our house and our vehicles to handle the cold, and last year - after going through the previous winters with snow shovels - we bought a snowblower.
When we moved into this house, the very first things we did was to buy a pellet stove (as a secondary heat source to the existing boiler) and have a propane-fired whole-house generator installed. We wanted two different heat sources, and we knew that winter storms could cause downed limbs and trees, which in turn could block roads and/or bring down power lines.
We not only moved north, we moved from city/suburb to rural/country, and we knew we had to be as self-sufficient as possible.
With the right set-up, and dressing appropriately for the weather, winter is my second-favorite season here. Yes, it gets cold. We deal with it. And we enjoy it. We have snow shoes. The quiet after a snowfall, and the very clear, very cold air ... it's invigorating. Sometimes we'll drive to the coast and watch the Atlantic pound the rocks, with the spray forming beautiful ice formations along the shore.
We're retired - we don't *need* to go out when it's snowing and the roads may be tricky. We always make sure we have food prior to a storm, and by the time we need or want to go anywhere, the roads are fine.
Maine summers are wonderful. We have a lakefront home, and that makes it even better. Our air-conditioning is supplied via open windows and a nice breeze off the lake. It seems to me that at some point during each summer, we'll have a stretch of high humidity for 3-4 days, and just that brief dose is enough to remind me of one of the many reasons we moved to, and love, Maine.
After growing up in SoCal, I lived most of my adult life in winter snow areas. I used to enjoy it, went ice-sailing and X-country skiing (gave up downhill in the 80s). But since 2010 I left the snow and went back to SoCal for the winters. Hated the driving and isolation (rural area), afraid of horse slipping and falling on me (happened in my 20s on slick pavement).
But as others have said, it's the ice and slippery conditions, fear of falling. Age and OA has brought 3 artificial joints and one has already popped out due to a fall so now I'm timid.
DH has Reynaud's Syndrome + thyroid so is extremely sensitive to cold now in his old age (63, lol). It must be 80 degrees for his comfort zone.
I have to remind myself it's OK that life changes, and we have to adapt. So thankful to be living now in the tropics. We have A/C at night, but ocean breezes during the day.
Maryland in the Summer--> I am miserable, the heat with its humidity is suffocating. I will take Winter over Summer any day. I do love having four Seasons, just prefer Summer to be much shorter.
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