I recently saw one about not wearing shorts after you're 20 years old... I just had to roll my eyes. Enjoy wearing pants all the time in the summer.
People online will make up rules like "men who wear this are children!" which are never based in reality. And to keep on topic, I'm sure they too stop caring by age 40 :-)
In my org, my reasonning for the many people wearing suits (usually not devs and management higher ups) is that their home has air conditionning, they come to work in their car with air conditionning and the building where we work has air conditionning.
That's how I think they survive. At least, that's what I hope for them.
NE is a different climate; that has its perks too: beautiful fall colors and wonderful snow storms (the milder ones I find fun to watch), and relatively speaking, no humidity.
As a Texan friend of mine once (jokingly) said "Weather is what you experience in a parking lot." (because everywhere else, on a day to day basis in a city — buildings/cars — is air conditioned; only that during that short trip from building to car do you endure the great outdoors) The few New Englander's I've tried this on didn't get it, whereas southerners seem to; YMMV, of course, there's no science here.
The other thing I've never seen, outside of the south, is the horizon turning green during a bad storm (caused by light refracting through hail). Also, I highly recommend the sight of a rainstorm moving across and towards you on the plains, and the sweet scented down-drafts that precede rain. And if you're sick of weather, Silicon Valley has none. (Unless you like fog, then see SF.)
I've been to the South too; we get like a week of weather like that most summers. Maybe you could quibble about the differences but it gets hot enough that I think the whole question about whether to wear shorts is equally valid.
As far as the parking lot thing... I mean, do you think we all spend a lot of time outside in the winter?
(I assumed you were a longstanding reader referencing this, but with an account ~3 months old, maybe not...) - http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
God, who are you?
Recently my girlfriend told me to pack some shorts for a trip to the Caribbean coast of a Latin American country and I bet her that there was no way the locals were going to be wearing shorts. I won.