Comment by andrew_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrew_ | Hacker News Reader

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I lived in Michigan until I was 35 and moved south in 2013. I have a litany of reasons for moving including soul-crushing endless winters, lack of reasonable summer, depressed economy, and a political landscape without an identity and with an extremely short memory (shorter than average in my view). I also spent my summers in Northern Michigan camping and have extremely fond memories of that. For the beauty that Michigan offers, you have to really, really enjoy the winter months and do OK with a lack of sun to make it there. I struggled something awful with Seasonal Affective Disorder [1] as an adult along with Vitamin D deficiency [2]. It's also worthwhile to look at things like insurance rates, vehicle registration, and cost of utilities for the municipalities listed. Take into account school systems if you have little ones - Michigan is not widely considered to have the best around, and routinely ranks in the bottom 1/3 of the States [3].

I clearly have a lot of bias against Michigan, so please take this for what it's worth. I did try to provide some backing for my bias, but I spent a long time saving to escape and if there's anyone aligned with my concerns, I hope I saved them a trip they'd regret.

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seasonal-affe... [2] https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Michigan/annual-days-... [3] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

> I have a litany of reasons for moving including soul-crushing endless winters, lack of reasonable summer, depressed economy, and a political landscape without an identity and with an extremely short memory (shorter than average in my view).

Cheers from Southern Urals, had a good laugh.

I live in Southern Ontario and now I'm wondering if I should be more depressed.

Honestly, same. I've been thinking about dipping to a coastal town somewhere with an English, French, or Spanish-speaking population.

GTA suburbs aren't bad but I love 10–20ºC and friendly people more.

GTA housing/rental market is beyond abysmal. A small 1bd costs you close to 2k CAD, and not to say the pay in tech here is much less than what you would get down in South.

Down to 1600-1700 now!

The bad tech pay continues to confuse me. It’s not for lack of talent imo.

Winter is going to be depressing without any getaways to Kuba though...

At the risk of sounding like a xenophobe, it is high rates of points based immigration. There's a lot of talent pouring in every year. There's definitely other factors too (Canadians don't seem great at starting tech companies that become big that usually pay higher wages).

It's not xenophobic to say that the market got flooded.

What's GTA?

Greater Toronto Area

Brighton in the UK is nice. :-)

Honestly it's less the weather and more the lack of sunlight in certain places in the midwest over the winter. After the two-three week autumn, it's just grey and brown and mud and salt for nearly half the year. Then sporadic snowstorms that your employer and school district makes you drive through.

Well I can address each point for my situation, do you have: temperatures below -30°C for at least a week straight each winter, your summer starts in late May and ends mid August, the furthest window of planning for any private business is exactly one year, you have the same president for 21 years who was the head of a Homeland Security before that and is a leader of a political party which has a nickname "Swindlers and Thieves" in the opposition?

No. Feeling better now.

Glad I could help.

I think one thing which helps is indeed the sun, with SAD.

-30C does suck, but... and this is one downside of remote work, if you have to get out daily, drive to work, drive home, you're going to catch sun some of that time.

In many parts of Southern Ontario, you still get sun with the cold. Lots and lots of sunny days.

As a counter, I moved to Vancouver which is always 10C+ essentially in the winter, often 15C days, yet rain and cloud.

There, I experienced SAD for the first time in my life. And I ran away, moved back to Ontario, after 10 years of it.

And a day on the radio when the announcer said "It's now been 32 days since we've seen the sun". The guy wasn't kidding. It had been more than a month since the clouds parted during daylight hours.

That. Really. Sucks.

There was a stretch of 40 days or so where there was no sun even in the Bay Area. It is very rare, but it has happened (circa 2006).

Southern Ontario (assuming you mean GTA and SW Ontario) is a bit milder than most of Michigan. Detroit is usually a degree or two colder than Toronto in the winter months, for instance, and it's warmer than most of the state.

This gave me a solid chuckle, thanks for that.

Grass is always greener! Cheers amigo, thanks for chiming in. Syracuse, NY

Word. I moved from Michigan to northern Europe (Berlin) and miss Michigan's long, bright winter days. ;-)

Michigan's big cities are on about the same latitude as the French Riviera.

Latitude isn't everything, the Gulf stream and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation keeps western Europe much warmer than it otherwise would be just based on it's latitude.

Fun fact that current is weakening somewhat because of climate change so European winters may get much worse. [0]

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ocean-current-keep...

I heard that more important than ocean currents is the Rocky Mountains, which causes the jet stream to go south, then north.

It's probably both I'm not a climate scientist so I can't really say one is more important than the other but the AMOC does bring warm water up the coast as well and if that goes away and the water cools the air brought over by the Gulf Stream will probably be colder as well.

OK, but I hope you realize that the Gulf stream is a water current whereas I,m talking about an air current.

They're about 4,500 miles (7,400km) apart so I'm fairly confident latitude isn't the only factor in their weather.

As someone who lived in Michigan for over 25 years, let me just say that I share your biases, for similar reasons. Moving to California was the best thing ever for me, because the winter months didn't make me want to die.

As someone who grew up in Minnesota then lived in Wisconsin for many years I relate. Moving to Florida was the best thing for me, winter months no longer make me want to die.

yeah, but summer in Florida is hellishly hot, humid and buggy

Eh, if one can handle the humidity in Michigan, one can handle the humidity in Florida. It's just that you don't get much of a break from it (two months in the "winter" down here)

My thoughts exactly. I remember some summer mornings in Michigan where I felt like I was swimming through the air. It only got worse later in the day once it got warmer.

100%. The cornfields of the Midwest sweat as much as the humidity in many parts of Florida. Just thinking about the temperatures in MN and WI today (below freezing already!) causes tension in my back and my shoulder blades to flex. No thanks. I'll take relaxed muscles any day. It's a bit confusing to me to think my family is bundled up in winter outerwear already. I forget it's almost November thanks to upper 70 and lower 80 degree temps here(panhandle).

Meh. Depends where in Florida you are. I'm in the panhandle a few miles from the coast. Summer temps and humidity are comparable to the Midwest, except our humidity lasts for more than 5 months. The bugs (mosquitoes) where I'm at are actually less than where I came from thanks to, for better and for worse, the county spraying to keep their numbers down.

London is further north than Toronto or Michigan and we don't get anything this bad. Thank you, Gulf Stream.

Same reason NE Scotland is so lush at the latitude of Southern Alaska. :)

It is mad and being UK born and bred I sort of took it for granted.

In my head I had a mental picture that London was level with NY. Until one time when I was reading a discussion on here about farming and someone called the UK "the far north" and said that we are further north than all of the continental USA. Mind blown.

As an American this only hit home for me when visiting England in July. Sunset at 10pm and sunrise at 4am was lovely, But I wouldn't much like to visit in January with only six hours of daylight.

I live in Spain, and I can relate having good weather and plenty of sun light increases life-quality :)

I left Utah for exactly the same reasons and would never live there again under any circumstances.

Latitude is 41° to 48°, it's not even proper north.

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