Looking at Wyoming as a Possible Relocation Choice

[sunsprit]

HiW misleads again ...

I've spent way too many a winter night in Cody for my manufacturer's rep sales route. As I've posted here on C-D pages in the past, I had my choice of any campsite at the Buffalo Bill Res west of town ... the place was completely deserted. In ambient temps well below freezing when I arrived, it was a brutal experience with the constant buffeting from the 30-40-50 mph winds and gusts. As I've related here, I wound up heading back down to Cody and parking my Class B Roadtrek RV in the lee wind shadow of the WalMart on the West side of town, adjacent to the building in the first parking row. And still, my RV was violently buffeted back and forth throughout the night. The best respite I ever got from such extreme weather events was to get permission from the O'Reilly Car Parts store to park at the East end of their building in the driveway leading around to the back ... subject to my early AM departure so that their delivery truck could access the back entry loading area. With such close quarters, I was finally sheltered from the wintry gust blasts. If this had happened once or twice through the years, I'd say it was an isolated experience and put it in that perspective; but I've had this experience repeated numerous times every winter for the last 8 years. It's the norm, not an unusual episode.

One has but to do an online search for the "wind energy density maps" of the continental USA to see the high average wind energy density (that means high wind speeds over the course of a year) that presents in WY. If you don't like strong winds and gusts, then WY is not for you. Even in the lesser wind areas of WY, relatively speaking ... it's still a lot of wind compared to other places around the USA. And for further evidence of the winds here, a glance at the number of traffic accidents and off-road excursions by folk driving the freeways around the state will enlighten you further ... vehicles (including heavily laden semi's) get "blown off the road" in slick ... and sometimes not so slick ... conditions. Again, an online search for "Winter driving in Wyoming" will be quite revealing as to the conditions that frequently present here; there's a bunch of YouTube videos which are very representative of the real world driving here.

So, even if one opines that "Wyoming winters are mild compared to the eastern U.S." ... I call BS here. A real tip-off to me is my many years of reading about how folks up in New England along the coastal areas engaged in boatbuilding are able to erect simple plastic sheeting structures for a boat building shelter. Using modest heating sources such as a small wood stove fed by their offcuts or scrap wood, they are able to keep their boat projects at a nominal temperature where it's reasonably comfortable to work inside in the winter as well as warm enough for the glues and epoxies to cure properly in their projects. We've got similar plastic sheeting structures here in Wyoming for our greenhouses ... "tunnel greenhouses" ... and (in addition to my own) have helped erect many based upon FarmTek structures. The FarmTek kits are but a starting point because they will not withstand Wyoming snow and wind loads, especially wind loads in the gusts here. There's no way that one can reasonably heat these structures to a satisfactory temp for glues/epoxy to cure in our winter temps, let alone warm enough from a small woodstove to make the work area comfortable enough to be a winter workshop.

Again, I point to the charts listing the "coldest places" around the USA. They're predominantly found in the higher elevation areas of the Rocky Mountains. IIRC, there's only one low elevation cold area in the USA that makes the top 20 list ... somewhere around Sault Ste Marie. Chicago conditions don't come close to what presents here in Wyoming except for the higher prevailing humidity through the year which can make their low temps appear colder from a comfort standpoint.

In any event, if one is seeking a "greener" place in the USA, cooler temps but not bitterly cold, nor a lot of snowfall, with modest breezes prevailing ... one might consider the PNW inland areas not too far from the ocean shoreline. Riparian climates moderated by the ocean, not at altitude and not exposed to the offshore stronger winds.

PS: Mrs Sun grew up in northern WI and is reasonably knowledgeable about the climes in the northern great lakes area of the USA. Here at the ranch in SE WY, she's frequently observed that the conditions here were colder and much windier than where her relatives were at "up North". The big differences are the much lower humidity here and the much stronger winds/gusts we have. We can frequently measure 100+ mph gusts in our area that are sustained for hours at a time, and witness the devastation that they can bring to buildings/structures/roofs/siding/trees. And one can read the WY DOT advisories in the winter months about highway travel ... "no high profile vehicles", or road closures due to winter driving conditions ... typically, very strong wind gusts are the determinant factor for the closures. Or read about the accidents in the Arlington area, or around Casper, or around other portions of Wyoming during a typical winter ... primarily again due to the winds of the area. How many other states bother to put a wind sock and wind advisory cautions on their highways such as may be found along I-25 by Chugwater ... which is typically a gusty area for much of the year? If you look at the building codes for the respective areas, you'll find that WY specs are higher for wind loads than the Great Lakes areas of the USA. As well, heating degree days are higher here than that area. Mrs Sun observes that the reason those northern area winters aren't pleasant has to do with the high humidity and wet snow accumulations through the winter months ... she'd rather deal with the dry cold temps and gusty winds of WY but acknowledges these are tougher conditions to deal with.

PPS: It's been some number of years ago, but just to put another example of the extreme wind gusts that present in this area ... I was at a 180Club Fly-In at Cody in June. We had a sizable group of experienced C180 pilots/owners in for the multi-day event with a focus on flying the area with tours to YNP. We lost two aircraft that year ... one ground looped at Cody due to the high winds/gusty crosswinds there that day and the other (an experienced mountain pilot) in a valley area approaching YNP ... again, due to the extreme gusts creating a downdraft that they couldn't outclimb. For those of us who routinely fly this area of the USA, we take the winds/crosswinds/gusts pretty seriously ... to a degree of proficiency above the norm for most pilots from out of the area. But to have two experienced pilots lose control of these aircraft in a summer weekend here is a sad commentary on how windy/gusty this area of the USA can be. On other threads on C-D, you can read about our anecdotes of flying GA aircraft here in Wyoming. One particularly noteworthy post was by a pilot who needed a checkride from an FAA examiner who announced that they couldn't fly the checkride that day because the prevailing winds were "too strong" ... but they were typical winds of the area. The pilot insisted upon flying that day and did just fine. As well, I've had my CFII do my BFR's with me on windy days when he was cancelling other pilots because he knows from experience (and 20 years of BFR's with me) that I handle these conditions OK ... but he knows that I will postpone my flights if I'm not comfortable with the conditions that day and have done so a few times when the winds were extreme. I've handled 40-50-60 mph crosswinds here in WY with success, but was always prepared to use my judgement to fly on to another airstrip with more favorable conditions if need be.
My reference point here is that we GA pilots are far more attuned to the winds and conditions that present here than most folk on the street around here ... for us, it's literally a matter of "life and death" at risk.

But the real point of all this is that the OP wasn't considering that IL area of the USA, they were seeking information about WY in light of a PA and SoCAL background ... neither of which bear any relationship to upper IL or Chicago in many ways beyond climate considerations.