CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: medinabuckeye1 on June 13, 2025, 11:09:01 AM
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I made this chart where I kept the Population of NY as a constant. Ie, This is the populations of States as a percentage of NY's population over time:
(https://i.imgur.com/VFBiPpG.png)
I've included (I don't think I missed any) every state that was in the top-15 in population in any census from 1880-2020.
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I think the biggest factor here is Air Conditioning. If you look closely, Texas, Florida, and Arizona specifically all got a boost in roughly 1940 and then an even bigger boost in roughly 1970.
My thinking is that A/C became common in large institutional buildings in roughly the 1940's and it became relatively common in residential homes in roughly the 1970's. I googled that to check my theory and it roughly confirms it:
- "Air conditioning in office buildings became common gradually throughout the 20th century, starting in the 1930s and accelerating in the 1950s and 1960s."
- "Air conditioning in homes became common during the 1950s and 1960s"
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California:
In the late 1800s and early 1900s the "big four" states were NY, PA, IL, and OH. Back then, California's population was a fraction of even the least populous of those and it didn't really even start gaining until after the turn of the century.
In 1900 California's population was a shade under 1.5M which was:
- roughly 1/3 of Ohio's population of 4.2M
- less than 1/3 of Illinois' population of 4.8M
- less than 1/4 of Pennsylvania's population of 6.3M
- roughly 1/5 of New York's population of 7.3M
From then through 1940 California was gaining on the "big four" but only gradually compared to what was to come. In 1940 on the eve of US involvement in WWII California's population was still (barely) less than Ohio's, substantially less than Illinois and Pennsylvania and barely over 1/2 of New York's population.
Starting in 1940 California's population just exploded. They passed OH, IL, and PA in the 1950 census and moved ahead of NY into #1 twenty years later. The VERY rapid growth continued through 1990 then slowed and in the most recent decade (2010-2020) California's growth slowed to barely faster than NY, PA, IL, OH, etc.
A lot of this, I think, is a result of the war and it's aftermath. California's economy for many years was tightly tied to the defense industry both through the basing of large numbers of troops there and a lot of defense contractors having operations there.
Air Conditioning was less of a factor for California than TX/FL/AZ because coastal California's temperatures are moderated by the relatively cool Pacific Ocean and, at least until relatively recently, the vast majority of California's population lived in coastal areas.
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Texas:
If you look at the line for Texas, their population grew only marginally faster than NY up through 1940. Then from 1940-1970 it still grew only a little faster than NY.
Comparing Texas to Ohio, Texas' from 1940 to 1970 Texas' population grew from slightly less than Ohio's to slightly more than Ohio's.
Texas' really fast growth started in the 1970's. My theory is that this is mostly due to two factors:
- Widespread air conditioning. Without this I don't think a whole lot of people would willingly choose to live in Austin, and
- The 1970's oil boom. OPEC's embargo pushed up the price of Oil which sucked for everyone who needed oil but it was GREAT for the people who owned oil wells and Texas has led all states in Oil production since the 1920's. Thus, when the per-barrel price of oil shot up in the 1970s a whole lot of Texas ranchers saw their wealthy skyrocket.
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Florida:
I think Florida is probably more A/C dependent than any of the states listed previously. Prior to A/C I think that Florida was fine to visit in the winter but not somewhere a lot of people wanted to stay.
Their population grew marginally faster than most states up through 1970ish then just exploded. In the 1970 census their population of 6.8M was:
- Less than NJ and MI
- Nearly 4M less than OH (10.7M)
- Nearly 4.5M less than IL (11.1M)
- Barely over 1/2 of PA (11.8M)
- Barely over 1/3 of NY (18.2M)
In the half-century since their population grew to #3 behind only CA and TX.
Looking back it amazes me that the first time I visited FL (1979) I travelled from a more populous state (OH) to a less populous state (FL).
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Great data, enjoy the analysis.
I'll add that another reason for growth in Texas since the 70s and accelerating in the 90s, was the increase in the state's "business friendly" political environment. This was a direct result of the dissolution of the "Solid South" and the electorate putting more Republicans into high government office, over time.
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@OrangeAfroMan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=58) this might help give some context to the discussion we had about the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum. One can in hindsight look back and see them as failures because they weren't able to fill them the way you think they should...
But in the context of the Roaring 20's, in a state that was rapidly growing in population, and that looked like everything was going to be "up and to the right" forever... I understand why the people behind building those stadiums perhaps were dreaming big.
Perhaps it didn't pan out, but I understand why they thought it would.
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Pennsylvania:
This one really interests me because I can't come up with an obvious explanation. If anyone has one or a theory, I'd be interested to hear it.
From 1880-1920 Pennsylvania was not only the second most populous state but they were also a LOT closer to #1 NY than they were to #3 (IL) and #4 (OH). Since then their population relative to the others has drifted downward considerably.
I understand or at least I think I understand why CA, TX, and FL have grown faster than PA but I'm at a loss to explain why NY, IL, and OH have grown faster. In 1920 PA was almost as populous as NY and substantially ahead of IL and OH. A century later their population is roughly 2/3 of NY's, only barely over IL, and not all that far above OH. Why?
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Pennsylvania:
This one really interests me because I can't come up with an obvious explanation. If anyone has one or a theory, I'd be interested to hear it.
From 1880-1920 Pennsylvania was not only the second most populous state but they were also a LOT closer to #1 NY than they were to #3 (IL) and #4 (OH). Since then their population relative to the others has drifted downward considerably.
I understand or at least I think I understand why CA, TX, and FL have grown faster than PA but I'm at a loss to explain why NY, IL, and OH have grown faster. In 1920 PA was almost as populous as NY and substantially ahead of IL and OH. A century later their population is roughly 2/3 of NY's, only barely over IL, and not all that far above OH. Why?
I can't necessarily explain OH. But NY and IL make sense...
If you think of the gradual urbanization of the US during that time, there was growth of certain "dominant" cities. New York and Chicago are two of those. DC is obviously one, Atlanta is another, I'd say Dallas/Houston both qualify, LA/SF/SD, Seattle, Boston and Denver might round out the list. Dominant cities are attractors of population at the regional (and sometimes even national) level, not just state level.
I don't see Pittsburgh or Philly as "dominant" cities. So they might attract rural Pennsylvanians who were migrating to the city, but rural Pennsylvanians might also get pulled away by NY or DC... Or even Chicago. If they stayed in the area at all--they might also move South or West.
But the dominant cities draw from beyond their own state's rural population. Think of Atlanta... It's not just the hub for Georgians that were moving to "the big city", but they'll pull from AL/MS/SC/TN/etc. Chicago will pull from the entire Midwest, not just IL. Denver pulls from the entire Mountain West, not just CO. Seattle from the entire Northwest, not just WA. And the California cities, quite frankly, pull nationally, just as NY or DC would.
I look at it like the way I look at Purdue & Indiana football. Indiana football kids grow up dreaming of playing for ND... Or UM or OSU... OH kids dream of playing for OSU. MI kids dream of playing for UM. So Purdue & Indiana have trouble even keeping their own kids in state, and much MORE trouble pulling from neighboring states, because nobody in Michigan or Ohio State is really all that excited about a Purdue or IU offer.
I think Pennsylvania might be like that. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are pretty solid cities. They're going to end up with a lot of the "in state recruits" so to speak. But they're going to have a hard time keeping NY or DC or Chicago (or LA) from poaching "recruits", and a VERY hard job pulling them from states outside PA.
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That is an interesting explanation and it all makes sense and seems plausible except for the fact that, as you pointed out, Pennsylvania's population also drifted downward relative to Ohio and I'll add Michigan. Michigan's and Ohio's big cities are less dominant or at least no more dominant than Philly.
I was thinking that maybe Philly and Pittsburgh had lost more relative to cities like Cleveland and Detroit but I looked it up and it is actually the opposite. Philly, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh all hit their peak census population in 1950. Philly was a little over 2M, Detroit was a little under 2M, Cleveland was about half their population at a little under 1M, and Pittsburgh had just under 700k. Since then Detroit and Cleveland have each lost about 2/3 of their populations but Pittsburgh has lost only around half and Philly has only lost about 1/4 of theirs so today (2020 census):
- 1.6M, Philly
- 656k, Detroit
- 373k, Cleveland
- 303k, Pittsburgh
I think you are right for PA's population relative to NY and IL but that still leaves us wondering why PA's population has drifted downward relative to OH and MI.
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We moved to ATL in 1964. I recall most of the houses we looked at had central AC, and it was a big factor even though the house we bought (new) did not. We had a large window unit in the family room and a whole house fan. My parents installed central air in 1970. I think by 1970 every new middle class house had central air.
There is a residential area just north of me that was started in 1904. Nearly every house there has a large front porch, which was their version of AC along with fans. It's now a rather expensive area so they all have AC today. Some of the houses have been demo'd and replaced with new, most were just restored/updated. They look really nice.
Living here without central air, even today in June, would be ... unpleasant. I was just out running and I'm soaked. There are other factors for population growth, in the 1950s there were a lot of cloth mills around, carpet production, etc., because labor was cheap, so was land. The textile industry then moved to Asia leaving some towns here bereft.
But I think without AC, the South would have half its current population.
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Yeah, I'm sure there's more analysis that we're missing.
The other thing I always come back to is jobs. There was CD's infographic post about where "50% of the country's GDP" occurs, and [unsurprisingly] it's the big cities. People talk about the insanely high cost of living out here in CA... But people live here because there are also high-paying jobs, in industries that grow.
I can't speak with any authority about the various industries that are growing or declining in that area of the country. But is it possible that some of the ones declining--especially in the "rust belt"--are hitting PA harder? From what I've read, isn't Ohio somewhat of a hotbed of medical companies--signifying perhaps they better made the transition from heavier manufacturing to the knowledge economy?
I don't really know... Just spitballing here. But perhaps "It's the economy, stupid" could more fully explain this.
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I broadly viewed Pennsylvania to be heavily into heavy industry back in the day, Ohio less so save Cleveland/Akron/etc.
I dimly recall that ca. 1880 Cincinnati was the fourth largest city in the country. I wouldn't like to survive their summers with AC either.
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(https://i.imgur.com/BXR6Vls.png)
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(https://i.imgur.com/BXR6Vls.png)
While I do find this interesting, it is slightly off point WRT A/C.
Indoor heating has obviously been around for a very long time. What changed is the availability of A/C so what would be more relevant to population trends would be a map of basically "Number of days of comfortable OR COOLER weather". Ie, instead of daily high of 50-85, just daily high of <85. That would obviously increase the # of days for everything in the North while having little or no impact in the South*.
*There are exceptions, of course. Parts of Arizona get REALLY cold as do parts of Texas, etc.
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It's 94 today and I'm comfortable.
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I was just at the pool, it's 84°F here with a slight breeze, partly cloudy, it felt comfortable after I got out of the pool and had dried off.
Humidity is listed at 58%. I could manage without AC today. But it's June.
Earlier when I was running I was definitely hot though
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While I do find this interesting, it is slightly off point WRT A/C.
Indoor heating has obviously been around for a very long time. What changed is the availability of A/C so what would be more relevant to population trends would be a map of basically "Number of days of comfortable OR COOLER weather". Ie, instead of daily high of 50-85, just daily high of <85. That would obviously increase the # of days for everything in the North while having little or no impact in the South*.
*There are exceptions, of course. Parts of Arizona get REALLY cold as do parts of Texas, etc.
Well, I disagree to an extent. Because while heating can make you nice and comfortable indoors, you have to leave the house eventually. And for a couple of months per year in the Midwest, that's just... Painful.
I've said before that one of my most happy days was the day--about 8 months into living in CA, when I realized the plastic ice scraper on the floor in my back seat could just be... thrown away. I wasn't going to be needing it. I wouldn't have to shovel or snowblow. I wouldn't have any days where I had to bundle up. I mean... It still got chilly in San Jose in the winter. Overnight. But it didn't get frigid, and once the sun came up it was typically still nice.
So it's a cuts both ways. The introduction of AC made it feasible for people to move to the South because they could finally exist comfortably indoors. But even though houses in the North were heated during the winters... People still moved south to flee those same winters.
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There is a pretty neat town in the NC mountains called Highlands, I think it's around 4400 feet, and it's where a lot of wealthy southerners would venture in summer.
It's a pretty ritzy town today, no touristy spots, no chain restaurants or motels. Each thousand feet of altitude cuts 4.5°F in temperature, on average.
So, if it's 90°F in Atlanta, add 3400 feet and it's 74° or so.
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Well, I disagree to an extent. Because while heating can make you nice and comfortable indoors, you have to leave the house eventually. And for a couple of months per year in the Midwest, that's just... Painful.
But it is the same with A/C.
I guess it also depends on HOW hot we are talking. I had some relatives that lived in Tucson and we visited them in the early 80s. They had an air-conditioned garage. We thought that was a silly extravagance until we visited them in the summer. Good god. It routinely gets above 110 there. I know it is a personal preference. You might rather deal with 110-120 outdoor temperatures and be able to throw your scraper away. I'll keep my scraper.
If we are talking about a situation where heat is commonly available and A/C is either not invented yet or not accessible to the masses there is a BIG difference between heat and cool. You CAN get out of the cold, you CANNOT get out of the hot.
If this is 1900 and A/C hasn't been invented yet and it is 120 in Tucson you are just plain suffering through 120 with no respite. If this is 1900 in Minneapolis and it goes down to -20 overnight, throw an extra lump of coal on the fire and you'll be snug.
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But it is the same with A/C.
I guess it also depends on HOW hot we are talking. I had some relatives that lived in Tucson and we visited them in the early 80s. They had an air-conditioned garage. We thought that was a silly extravagance until we visited them in the summer. Good god. It routinely gets above 110 there. I know it is a personal preference. You might rather deal with 110-120 outdoor temperatures and be able to throw your scraper away. I'll keep my scraper.
If we are talking about a situation where heat is commonly available and A/C is either not invented yet or not accessible to the masses there is a BIG difference between heat and cool. You CAN get out of the cold, you CANNOT get out of the hot.
If this is 1900 and A/C hasn't been invented yet and it is 120 in Tucson you are just plain suffering through 120 with no respite. If this is 1900 in Minneapolis and it goes down to -20 overnight, throw an extra lump of coal on the fire and you'll be snug.
In cold -- you can put on enough clothes to stay warm
In hot -- you cannot take off enough clothes to get cool.
That Cali weather though.....just right.
Minneapolis is the coldest I've ever been in my life. F that place.
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San Diego was the coldest I’ve been in weeks.
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But it is the same with A/C.
I guess it also depends on HOW hot we are talking. I had some relatives that lived in Tucson and we visited them in the early 80s. They had an air-conditioned garage. We thought that was a silly extravagance until we visited them in the summer. Good god. It routinely gets above 110 there. I know it is a personal preference. You might rather deal with 110-120 outdoor temperatures and be able to throw your scraper away. I'll keep my scraper.
If we are talking about a situation where heat is commonly available and A/C is either not invented yet or not accessible to the masses there is a BIG difference between heat and cool. You CAN get out of the cold, you CANNOT get out of the hot.
If this is 1900 and A/C hasn't been invented yet and it is 120 in Tucson you are just plain suffering through 120 with no respite. If this is 1900 in Minneapolis and it goes down to -20 overnight, throw an extra lump of coal on the fire and you'll be snug.
We're not disagreeing here.
My point is that you're talking about indoor temps, though.
I'll use myself here as anecdata. I DO NOT want to move back to Chicago. I DO NOT want to deal with those winters any more.
However, if it was a question of winter in Chicago vs heat in Austin w/o AC, or heat in Atlanta w/o AC, or heat in Tucson w/o AC or heat in Miami w/o AC... I might choose Chicago.
But once you introduce AC, now you have comfortable indoor temps in the South, and HORRIFIC outdoor temps in the North. It's not just a pull... It's also a push. People WANT to get out of the cold--and AC makes that possible because it allows you to deal with the heat.
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Extreme hot is just less of a hassle today than extreme cold. Icy roads, snow chains, digging your car out, shoveling snow, etc.....vs discomfort in the hot.
Multiple pairs of socks, gloves, hats, jackets......just so much STUFF. Such a pain in the ass.
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It's 94 today and I'm comfortable.
I am heading to my cabin on the lake in Michigan- for the summer. They have been having overnight lows in the high 50s and low 60s where you can actually have your windows open!
I will have to come back to Florida at least once a month for work purposes, but that’s OK
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true
91 here, I'm comfortable - no A/C
yet
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Looking forward to it.
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expected overnight low of 64, my windows will be open
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It'll be 112 here in Phoenix on Sunday. I'll be up in Sedona with friends. 4300'
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It'll be 112 here in Phoenix on Sunday. I'll be up in Sedona with friends. 4300'
You guys should go to Death Valley instead.
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You guys should go to Death Valley instead.
Baton Rouge or Clemson?
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Pennsylvania:
This one really interests me because I can't come up with an obvious explanation. If anyone has one or a theory, I'd be interested to hear it.
Why?
Philadelphia peaked in high school.
Pittsburgh was reliant on a now-obsolete economy.
Should have learned to code.
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@OrangeAfroMan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=58) this might help give some context to the discussion we had about the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum. One can in hindsight look back and see them as failures because they weren't able to fill them the way you think they should...
But in the context of the Roaring 20's, in a state that was rapidly growing in population, and that looked like everything was going to be "up and to the right" forever... I understand why the people behind building those stadiums perhaps were dreaming big.
Perhaps it didn't pan out, but I understand why they thought it would.
Right.
Stupid thinking.
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We're not disagreeing here.
My point is that you're talking about indoor temps, though.
I'll use myself here as anecdata. I DO NOT want to move back to Chicago. I DO NOT want to deal with those winters any more.
However, if it was a question of winter in Chicago vs heat in Austin w/o AC, or heat in Atlanta w/o AC, or heat in Tucson w/o AC or heat in Miami w/o AC... I might choose Chicago.
But once you introduce AC, now you have comfortable indoor temps in the South, and HORRIFIC outdoor temps in the North. It's not just a pull... It's also a push. People WANT to get out of the cold--and AC makes that possible because it allows you to deal with the heat.
I think I get where you are coming from now. I was thinking more in a historical context so lack of a/c anywhere, as you indicated, makes places like Tuscon, Austin, Atlanta, Miami pretty unappealing.
I also think that @jgvol (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1567) has a good point. Costal California has a moderate climate such that you never have to deal Chicago winters AND you also don't get brutally hot summers either.
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AC produced "Florida man."
In the 'before time,' people could only live near the coasts of FL, due to the seabreeze limiting temps. Inland was stagnant, moist, and hot.
Then the AC was invented, allowing people to populate the middle of the state, which gave rise to "Florida man."
Facts are facts.
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Wyoming, the least populated state (587k) now has 11 cities with at least 10,000 people, none over 70k. Montana with 1.1m only has 8 cities with 10k. Meanwhile, Texas has 12 cities with over 250,000 people. California with 15.
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I prefer the weather here to Cincinnati's by quite a bit. It stays "hot" longer here, but the hottest months are not as humid here, and the T is about the same on average.
The winters of course are vastly different. Cincinnati got really humid at times, and hot, it was ... unpleasant.
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got down to 61 this morning - windows open and a box fan in a window
cooling down the house for the expected afternoon high of 90
haven't run the A/C yet - it's been mild
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I also think that @jgvol (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1567) has a good point. Costal California has a moderate climate such that you never have to deal Chicago winters AND you also don't get brutally hot summers either.
You don't have to tell me twice. I live it :57:
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It'll be 112 here in Phoenix on Sunday. I'll be up in Sedona with friends. 4300'
I will probably golf in the morning and send the day in my pool, drinking an adult beverage and smoking a cigar. Rather have 112 which I dont mind than anything below 50 degrees
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112 is better than -12
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Especially when you have a pool behind your house.
I wouldn't live here without one, but many do.
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Every time I go home, I’m like “damn this is nice.”
Then I look at home prices and say, “well, I guess someone is paying for that.”
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We moved to ATL in 1964. I recall most of the houses we looked at had central AC, and it was a big factor even though the house we bought (new) did not. We had a large window unit in the family room and a whole house fan. My parents installed central air in 1970. I think by 1970 every new middle class house had central air.
There is a residential area just north of me that was started in 1904. Nearly every house there has a large front porch, which was their version of AC along with fans. It's now a rather expensive area so they all have AC today. Some of the houses have been demo'd and replaced with new, most were just restored/updated. They look really nice.
Living here without central air, even today in June, would be ... unpleasant. I was just out running and I'm soaked. There are other factors for population growth, in the 1950s there were a lot of cloth mills around, carpet production, etc., because labor was cheap, so was land. The textile industry then moved to Asia leaving some towns here bereft.
But I think without AC, the South would have half its current population.
Really? June? Realistically speaking, most of the time we have to crank our AC's up in late February or certainly March. By June it's at least 90+ degrees, and as always the humidity is super high.
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I work for a large company with HQ squarely in the Midwest and we get a lot of Midwesterners in our division, many of whom will stay here or other points down south for their entire career. They always tell me the would much rather handle the heat/summers here than the cold up North.
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I think a lot of the population increase of the southern states can be traced back to several different factors, not just necessarily AC. For example, Union labor is much less common in the South, so companies have a much easier time getting things done. There are lots of other things that I think are "pro-business" but also we're simply less regulated as an individual and also much of the time less taxed.
There are just natural things that exist in much of the south that you simply cannot reproduce like oil, which leads to oil refineries, which needs shipping which needs ports. Last I checked there is no ocean front property in Ohio and many of the more northern states.
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There are just natural things that exist in much of the south that you simply cannot reproduce like oil, which leads to oil refineries, which needs shipping which needs ports. Last I checked there is no ocean front property in Ohio and many of the more northern states.
Ehhh. More than a few lake ports in those cities.
Those northern places did have certain natural things, which fed factories. But certian products were made cheaper elsewhere, or resources were stripped away to a degree.
Southern infrastructure also caught up too, in a grander scale.
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Ehhh. More than a few lake ports in those cities.
Also lots of railways connecting them...
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lots of railways thru nebraska
not a huge population
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We also had reverse migration as blacks went north for jobs. When I was a kid, the South was impoverished, mostly, the small towns were suffering, infrastructure was problematic. The black folks had it worst of course because of the Jim Crow stuff. There were low taxes and a small tax base. The Interstate highway system helped a lot, I think. Every exit on a new expressway soon attracted stuff, often not very pretty stuff, but stuff. As noted, companies opened factories because labor was cheap, and now transportation by truck became practicable. DoTs built bypasses around many towns that led to Walmarts which tended to ruin the downtown areas, some of which recovered a bit due to tourism (see freeways). I think much of north Georgia exists because of Atlanta, it's an easy drive up into the mountains and the tourist towns have stuff to do.
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(https://bunny-wp-pullzone-2v7xwnunut.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fire-Drones_MDW_25-1024x684.jpg)
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When I was a kid, the South was impoverished, mostly, the small towns were suffering, infrastructure was problematic.
This would be before you were a kid but my dad talked about this a few times. His mother's family was from Georgia (where ATL is now located) and he (born in 1940) visited relatives down there in the late 1940s.
First, just some data:
- Ohio's pop in the 1940 and 1950 censuses was 6.9M and 7.9M respectively.
- Georgia's was well below half of that at 3.1M in 1940 and 3.4M in 1950. Note that not only was Georgia less populous, it was also growing more slowly.
- Atlanta's population in the 1940 and 1950 censuses was 302k and 332k respectively.
- Akron was nearly as populous as Atlanta with a population of 245k in 1940 and 275k in 1950.
- Cleveland's was more than double that of Atlanta at 878k in 1940 and 915k in 1950.
I don't remember when you said you moved from Cincy to Atlanta but Cincinnati's population was more than Atlanta's up until the 1970 census. This is obviously before you, but in 1920 Cincy's population double Atlanta's.
My dad said that when he went to Georgia in the late 1940s it was like visiting a 3rd world country. They had Ox carts bringing produce into the cities at a time when Cleveland/Akron/NE Ohio was functioning as a modern, fully-mechanized economy.
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Also lots of railways connecting them...
Of course YOU would point that out, being from Chicago.
Chicago is, of course, a major transportation hub because railways from the NE to the West Coast nearly all run through it so that ends up being the warehousing/logistics center where everything gets sorted and sent out. As such, Chicago's growth was stupendous in the early days of Rail. Back on the first page of this thread I showed Illinois' population passing Ohio's in the 1890 census. This was almost completely due to Chicago's rapid growth:
- 4,470 in 1840
- 29,963 in 1850 ~6x
- 112,172 in 1860 ~4x
- 298,977 in 1870 ~3x
- 503,185 in 1880 ~1.5x
- 1,099,850 in 1890 ~2x
- 1,698,575 in 1900 ~1.5x
By comparison, Ohio's most populous cities:
- In 1840 Cincy was #6 nationally and Cleveland was #68 with 46,338 and 6,071 respectively.
- In 1850 Cincy was #6 nationally with 115,435.
- In 1860 Cincy was #7 nationally with 161,044 and Chicago and entered the top-10 at #9. It was the world's fastest growing city.
- By 1900 Chicago had established it's position as America's "second city". It's population of 1.7M was more than 4x that of Cleveland (392k) and more than 5x that of Cincy (326k). This despite the fact that Cleveland was growing rapidly compared to basically anything other than Chicago and in 1900 Both Cleveland (#7) and Cincy (#10) were among the 10 most populous cities in the US.
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We first moved to ATL in 1964 (from Augusta). Metro Atlanta at the time was pretty modern. The city of Atlanta is still a pretty small slice of metro Atlanta, about 1/12th the population of the whole area.
The rural areas in Georgia, and the South, were pretty "backwards" until perhaps 1970 or so when things perceptibly began to change. I do think highways was a big part of that.
My Dad would take me out to Lawrenceville to get a haircut for 25 cents sometimes. That county was very rural at the time, now it's about to be the most populated county in the state with over a million residents. It had maybe 40,000 in 1964? Our house was on the outer edge of populated metro Atlanta, just outside what later was the Perimeter (I285). I would walk over and watch them build that highway in 1968-9. It was six lanes at the time it was built and some said that was over doing it.
We would visit our grandparents every summer fairly often, mostly my mom's in rural East Tennessee near Sevierville. That area of course has changed markedly (not so much for the better in my view). My Dad's parents lived outside a small town in NE Georgia (where I was born) off a dirt road. Most of the state highways were paved with this gravely stuff, gravel and some asphalt, but not smooth.
Yeah, it was all pretty "backward", and I'm talking about how it was for white folks. I remember in Augusta there was a part of town where the "wealthy" black folks lived, for a 6 year old it was perplexing as the black folks I saw were all maids or porters or shoe shiners, menial labor, but my mom told me they also had doctors and dentists and professional people, all of it an entirely separate life. In winter, there were times my mom had to drive our maid home because her husband could not drive in our area after dark.
I was in high school before there was even a handful of black students around, they had to be bussed in. In Atlanta, some street names still change as they go from north (a white area) to south (black areas), though today the place is more integrated, but the south of Atlanta is mostly black.
We have made a mess of a lot of things.
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(https://i.imgur.com/pX0gh6X.png)
The dark red have the highest black population.
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Rather have 112 which I dont mind than anything below 50 degrees
Seriously?
Reading through here I realize that I have either a lot less heat-tolerance or a lot more cold-tolerance than the average poster here but even taking that into account this statement strikes me as ludicrous. 50 degrees isn't uncomfortably cold. There isn't snow nor ice. You don't need boots and @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) can still throw away his plastic scraper. You just need a sweater. 112, to me, is unbearably hot. I guess there is SOME consideration for what you are doing. If you are lounging in a pool then 112 isn't quite so unbearably hot (still WAY too hot for me but I'm realizing I'm an outlier here) but if you have to do some work outside like say mowing the lawn I can't believe that anyone would seriously choose 112 degree scorching heat over a cool 50 degree day. Am I wrong here?
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I find it uncomfortable outside when the dew point exceeds about 72°F. Below that it's "OK", in the shade with a breeze. I've been in Vegas in August, this "dry heat" notion is silly at that T.
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In Atlanta, some street names still change as they go from north (a white area) to south (black areas),
Totally off topic but do they change from Peach something to Peach something else?
What I remember from my experience driving around Atlanta was that navigation was exceedingly difficult for me because it seemed like every other cross-road had a name that was a derivative of "Peach":
Peach St
Peach Rd
Peach Boulevard
Peach Parkway
Peachtree St
Peachblossom
Peachfruit
Peachorchard
Some of those might be made up but it sure seemed like they were probably in there somewhere.
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I find it uncomfortable outside when the dew point exceeds about 72°F. Below that it's "OK", in the shade with a breeze. I've been in Vegas in August, this "dry heat" notion is silly at that T.
I think I'm on the same page. A guy I graduated with lived in Tucson for a while and was always saying "It's a dry heat". I think that has some validity but only to a point. Ie, I've been in Vegas and Tucson when it was 90-95 and I found that 90-95 and dry wasn't all that bad. I'd definitely take that over about 10-15 degrees cooler with high humidity. However, when it gets much over 100 it is just freaking hot and I don't care how dry it is, it is miserable to me.
A few years ago I was driving I10 and it got up around 120 and getting out of the car was just an awful experience. I'll take snowy midwestern winters over facing that without hesitation because, as @jgvol (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1567) said above no matter how cold it gets you, if you keep putting on more clothes eventually you'll be warm but that doesn't work the other way around.
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(https://i.imgur.com/unXxLE0.jpeg)
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Of course YOU would point that out, being from Chicago.
Chicago is, of course, a major transportation hub because railways from the NE to the West Coast nearly all run through it so that ends up being the warehousing/logistics center where everything gets sorted and sent out. As such, Chicago's growth was stupendous in the early days of Rail. Back on the first page of this thread I showed Illinois' population passing Ohio's in the 1890 census. This was almost completely due to Chicago's rapid growth:
Yeah, funny story. When my mom was young (LONG before I was born), she took a trip to Texas. One of the things that she was excited about was the prospect of eating steak in Texas. The steak HAS to be good, and fresh, because that's where the cows come from, right?
Nope. Chicago at the time was basically the country's slaughterhouse. Cattle from Texas [and elsewhere] was coming in via rail into Chicago and slaughtered. Which means that Chicago may have had the freshest beef in the nation. Now, it's certainly possible that some cattle would be slaughtered in Texas for Texas' consumption, but it's ALSO possible that a good portion of the beef for sale in Texas might have been from cows shipped by rail to Chicago, and then beef subprimals shipped by rail BACK to Texas... Depending where you bought your steak. So it's highly possible that beef you'd get in Chicago would actually be MORE fresh than the beef you'd buy in Texas, despite that being where the cattle were raised.
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Even today, Chicago is a great place to go for a steak (and pork chops).
We eat more fish than beef here. A lot more, actually.
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I don't think Medina would like it here much. 93 with a feel of 102.
(https://i.imgur.com/YfFvFzV.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/1od2kl2.png)
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I don't think Medina would like it here much. 93 with a feel of 102.
Ugh, I wouldn't.
A lot of this, even for others, is dependent upon a/c and what you are doing.
93, feeling 102 is fine if you are retired (more-or-less), lounging around, have a pool in your backyard, and have an air conditioned house.
How would you like it with no a/c, no pool, and needing to do outdoor civil engineering?
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Seriously?
Reading through here I realize that I have either a lot less heat-tolerance or a lot more cold-tolerance than the average poster here but even taking that into account this statement strikes me as ludicrous. 50 degrees isn't uncomfortably cold. There isn't snow nor ice. You don't need boots and @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) can still throw away his plastic scraper. You just need a sweater. 112, to me, is unbearably hot. I guess there is SOME consideration for what you are doing. If you are lounging in a pool then 112 isn't quite so unbearably hot (still WAY too hot for me but I'm realizing I'm an outlier here) but if you have to do some work outside like say mowing the lawn I can't believe that anyone would seriously choose 112 degree scorching heat over a cool 50 degree day. Am I wrong here?
I think it's different strokes for different folks... Despite what I've said about not wanting to go back to live someplace cold, I'd still take that over Vegas or Phoenix. There's a part of me that wants to move to Austin (job market + social climate + reduced CoL), but doesn't want to deal with that heat. I could probably stomach it, but only if I had a pool.
I definitely fit better in the cold. When I take the dog for an early morning winter walk, it's only a t-shirt and athletic shorts no matter what time of year. If it's below 50, I'll take a very light windbreaker. When I play golf, on the COLDEST winter tee off mornings I'll wear a little 1/4-zip pullover on top of my polo. But I usually get warm and take it off by the 2nd hole--or the 1st hole fairway on the course where I walk it...
Ideal for me is 65 degrees, and sunny. I start getting a little warm even when it's mid-high 70s if I'm in the sun; although that's perfectly fine in the shade. I'd absolutely take 50 degrees over 112.
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I think it's different strokes for different folks...
It definitely is but I think there are some broad generalities that all or at least nearly all of us would agree on.
I'll state for the record that even I agree that yes, midwestern winters are a pain. That said, they have actually become much LESS of a pain within not only my lifetime but within the last twenty years or so. This may sound minor, but the widespread adoption of remote-start has made winter MUCH less of a pain for me. When I graduated from college and started working here I didn't have a garage so on snowy days I had to go outside early enough to clear the snow and ice off my car before I left. Adding that delay to the delay of driving on snowy roads made my winter commute very long. Today that isn't an issue. Once in a while I'll be out somewhere and my car will get covered with snow. I remote start it and when I get in it is warm and the snow is gone.
On the other end, what I was getting at was this:
I'd absolutely take 50 degrees over 112.
As I said in response to @847badgerfan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=5) about 93 and feeling 102, to be fair I think this depends on what you are doing. On vacation or retired with a/c and lounging in a pool 93 feeling 102 isn't too bad but if you want to do anything outside, 112 is brutal. Mow the yard in 112? No thanks. Golf in 112? No thanks.
This is why @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) 's comment that he'd take 112 over anything <50 shocked me.
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Ugh, I wouldn't.
A lot of this, even for others, is dependent upon a/c and what you are doing.
93, feeling 102 is fine if you are retired (more-or-less), lounging around, have a pool in your backyard, and have an air conditioned house.
How would you like it with no a/c, no pool, and needing to do outdoor civil engineering?
There is a reason why I continue to resist my partners on starting an office here...
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A major problem with Midwest winters is that you can go months without seeing the sun. That is very depressing.
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CD put that map purporting to show the amount of temperate weather per year in the continental U.S. Where I live is among the most temperate in the nation, which is nice.
BUT...San Francisco is doing its best right now to remind everyone that while Mark Twain may not have said, he could have: the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
San Francisco is--if this isn't some urban legend that I've convinced myself is actually true--the coldest city in the United States during the summer months. Something about our location on the Pacific, the Bay, and how that impacts the microclimate...
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CD put that map purporting to show the amount of temperate weather per year in the continental U.S. Where I live is among the most temperate in the nation, which is nice.
BUT...San Francisco is doing its best right now to remind everyone that while Mark Twain may not have said, he could have: the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
San Francisco is--if this isn't some urban legend that I've convinced myself is actually true--the coldest city in the United States during the summer months. Something about our location on the Pacific, the Bay, and how that impacts the microclimate...
You're between two water bodies on that peninsula, and those water bodies don't warm up like the ones we have down here.
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CD put that map purporting to show the amount of temperate weather per year in the continental U.S. Where I live is among the most temperate in the nation, which is nice.
BUT...San Francisco is doing its best right now to remind everyone that while Mark Twain may not have said, he could have: the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
San Francisco is--if this isn't some urban legend that I've convinced myself is actually true--the coldest city in the United States during the summer months. Something about our location on the Pacific, the Bay, and how that impacts the microclimate...
I was there in mid-May 2 years ago, and I enjoyed the weather --- so much different than mine.
It was quite odd to wear a pullover and beanie hat in May, though.
If it was cloudy, foggy -- pullover, and the wind was chilly. When the clouds broke and the sun was shining --- off with the pullover, and the breeze was nice. Very odd -- for me.
A sunny, San Fran day @ 67-70 degrees might be near perfect weather.
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The Napa wine region is a bit unusual in that the colder part is in the south. The grow pinot noir and Chardonnay there (Carneros). Then it gets hotter as you go north.
This general area has some weird microclimates where you can go from pretty chilly to really hot in a few miles.
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Seriously?
Reading through here I realize that I have either a lot less heat-tolerance or a lot more cold-tolerance than the average poster here but even taking that into account this statement strikes me as ludicrous. 50 degrees isn't uncomfortably cold. There isn't snow nor ice. You don't need boots and @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) can still throw away his plastic scraper. You just need a sweater. 112, to me, is unbearably hot. I guess there is SOME consideration for what you are doing. If you are lounging in a pool then 112 isn't quite so unbearably hot (still WAY too hot for me but I'm realizing I'm an outlier here) but if you have to do some work outside like say mowing the lawn I can't believe that anyone would seriously choose 112 degree scorching heat over a cool 50 degree day. Am I wrong here?
First I won't do any work outside in either hot or cold. I pay people to do that. I have a desert landscape in my yard for a reason. I have played gold many times with it being well over 100 without thinking. In fact on this past friday. When the temps are in the high 40s or low 50s I think twice before golfing. I have been in the Phoenix area for 12 year now and I am a true desert dweller. I am going to see the Patriots-Browns game in late October in Foxboro and I definitely debated how cold it could possibly be before finally deciding to go. BTW I need more than a sweater if it is 50 degrees, I am definitely wearing a jacket.
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One thing I wonder about is if the Florida rush eventually diverts somewhere else in the region.
Like if it starts to feel crowded/becomes too expensive, do people start heading to Alabama or something?
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One appeal for Florida (and TN and TX and some others) is no state income tax. Georgia doesn't tax retirement income up to $130 K, but the income tax rate here is comparatively steep, and not progressive. I think the Chattanooga area is growing in part because of no taxes and yet you are 2 hours from Atlanta and close to mountains. You also might be fairly near your kids if they stayed in Ohio/
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One thing I wonder about is if the Florida rush eventually diverts somewhere else in the region.
Like if it starts to feel crowded/becomes too expensive, do people start heading to Alabama or something?
That's already starting to happen, with people leaving here for Alabama, etc. But they are also being backfilled with new people coming down. There is a lot on the market for longer than it was at the peak, but people are still coming, and builders are still building.
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One thing I wonder about is if the Florida rush eventually diverts somewhere else in the region.
Like if it starts to feel crowded/becomes too expensive, do people start heading to Alabama or something?
What, are you thinking of doing some real estate investing? :57:
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I have played gold many times with it being well over 100 without thinking. In fact on this past friday. When the temps are in the high 40s or low 50s I think twice before golfing.
Yep. I'd far rather play golf at 45 degrees than 105. Especially if sunny. That *might* be cold enough for me to wear long pants instead of shorts tho :57:
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Gues what?
The f'ing AC conked out.
Tech was just here and is coming back tomorrow morning.
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Be nicer if the AC conked out when it was 55°F. Oh wait.
We have two units, they are expensive, had to replace one already.
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Yep. I'd far rather play golf at 45 degrees than 105. Especially if sunny. That *might* be cold enough for me to wear long pants instead of shorts tho :57:
i have the thermostats in my house at 82 degrees. Most places in Phoenix are freezing during the summer, It always feels so good stepping outside in 100 degrees after eating in a restaurant.
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The highway construction around us continues, of course. The latest gig is parallel toll roads, privately financed, "express lanes" in effect. This yields complaints about how we can extend the hard rail system, but it is very different pots of money. The state DoT can't spend anything on mass transit, just highways, and the private tollways are, well, private. It's still an enormous investment for a 16 miles up north about to start, I don't really "get it". One would think there might be a better way. It will allow buses to roll on the new lanes to connect the last MARTA station with areas to the north, but that means you wait on a bus, take it to the MARTA station, then wait on a train. I've read that extending the train further out is now about a billion per mile, so that dog won't hunt.
GDOT, Peach State Partners advance Ga. 400 express lanes | Sandy Springs News | appenmedia.com (https://www.appenmedia.com/sandy_springs/gdot-peach-state-partners-advance-ga-400-express-lanes/article_75b770a8-a06e-4631-a679-b811655ef4c0.html)
Substantial competition of the estimated $4.6 billion express lanes project is expected in 2031. The major mobility improvement project has a minimum five-year construction timeline.
We're closed, don't move here.
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i have the thermostats in my house at 82 degrees. Most places in Phoenix are freezing during the summer, It always feels so good stepping outside in 100 degrees after eating in a restaurant.
Even before this discussion I suspected that I was an outlier on the lack of heat tolerance side.
At least from the comments on here I think it is pretty clear that @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) is an outlier on the other side. Even at that, I doubt that he'd feel the same way if he wasn't retired and able to pay people to handle things like yardwork. I can't imagine that more than a trivial number of people would rather mow the lawn in 112 than 52. I've worked construction and there is NO WAY I'd want to do that in Arizona. There aren't a whole lot of people who actually consider 100 degrees comfortable.
Where I am today it is in the high 70's and, IMHO, uncomfortably hot. Now granted a lot of that depends on what you are doing/wearing. At lunch today I had to go home and have lunch with the youngest while my wife took the bigger kids to a splash pad for a foam party thing they were doing there:
- Even though it is only high 70's, when I got to my truck which was parked in the sun it felt like an oven getting in.
- I was uncomfortably hot all the way home before the open window and a/c finally got it down to reasonable.
- After lunch with the youngest, I took him to the splash pad to drop him off to my wife. High 70's is fine in a bathing suit or shorts and a t-shirt but I'm dressed for work in long pants and a long-sleeve button-down shirt and tie. It was uncomfortably hot carrying a toddler across the parking lot and sitting in the sun with him and the other kids while my wife ran to the van for some things.
I don't mean to say that high 70's is terrible. My point is more that this is getting to the high end of my heat tolerance for everyday activities. I go to work dressed professionally. Sometimes I have to wear a suit and tie. I HATE wearing a suit and tie in 75+ weather.
I think that certain areas of coastal California are basically a weather cheat code. The Ocean (or altitude if you get into the mountains near the coast) keeps the summers as cool or in some areas cooler than the Midwest and the latitude permits you to, as @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) said, throw away the scraper.
Outside of that unusual exception I really wouldn't want to live anywhere much hotter than where I am. Maybe somewhere RIGHT on the coast in Florida but even at that, only if I was retired.
When I was a kid we visited relatives in Tucson. They were very wealthy and retired and had a pool in their backyard. They had lived in Arizona for decades and despite that, contra @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) they couldn't handle the heat. It was funny, they literally slept twice a day specifically to avoid the heat. They never went outside until after sunset. So they'd go out on the patio by the pool after sunset and stay out until around midnight. Then they slept something like midnight-4am, then they were back on the patio before sunrise drinking coffee and reading the paper and once the sun came up and it became uncomfortably hot (even to them) they went back into the a/c. Then they'd take a siesta and get the other half of their sleep after lunch.
I thought, even then as a little kid, that this seemed great if you were retired and could afford it but for anyone else it would SUCK to live there.
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I've read that extending the train further out is now about a billion per mile, so that dog won't hunt.
WOW!
My organization owns a few miles of track so I'm mildly familiar with RR operations and EVERYTHING related to a RR is ungodly expensive but even coming into this comment with that background this figure astounded me. Are they using solid gold rails?
I think when we replace rails it costs something like $500k per mile. Building is a LOT more expensive than replacing since initial construction includes grading, drainage, ballast, etc but still I can't imagine more than $5M/mi. So that leaves $995M/mi for RoW acquisition? You might be able to acquire RoW in Manhattan for that kind of money.
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Just hung a few strategic damp-rids and turned on the exhaust fans in the bathrooms and kitchen.
Tech said I could try and turn it on after dark to try and get some cool air for sleeping.
The evaporator coil froze so that means there is a freon leak. We'll see.
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Even before this discussion I suspected that I was an outlier on the lack of heat tolerance side.
Yep. As am I. My wife calls me a human toaster. I basically radiate heat at all times.
I don't even mind cold, sub-freezing temps. For me growing up in Chicago, though, I didn't like the 2 1/2 month period where the temp never got above 32. It was just the unceasing cold that seemed to never end--and with a lot of the time in the middle of that, single digit or sub-zero overnight lows.
To endure that every single day just wears you down. I could much more easily handle Denver, where you get the cold and it might drop 10 inches of snow in a day, but two days later it's 45 and sunny. Even those brief respites from the cold make it easier to handle.
I think that certain areas of coastal California are basically a weather cheat code. The Ocean (or altitude if you get into the mountains near the coast) keeps the summers as cool or in some areas cooler than the Midwest and the latitude permits you to, as Brad said, throw away the scraper.
It sure is. And there are two other things. First, even in the hot summer months, it's a dry heat. Which means not only that you're not sweating like a sauna, but that the lack of humidity in the air means that it cools down MUCH more, and much more quickly, as the sun goes down. Second, because it's a desert and there's not standing water, we mostly don't have mosquitos. Which means that as you get to the point when the sun is dropping and it's finally nice to be outside, you're not going to get eaten alive like you will in the Midwest.
It would be even nicer if I moved somewhere that I didn't have small foothills between me and the water... But that's even more $$$ than here lol...
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Even before this discussion I suspected that I was an outlier on the lack of heat tolerance side.
At least from the comments on here I think it is pretty clear that @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) is an outlier on the other side. Even at that, I doubt that he'd feel the same way if he wasn't retired and able to pay people to handle things like yardwork. I can't imagine that more than a trivial number of people would rather mow the lawn in 112 than 52. I've worked construction and there is NO WAY I'd want to do that in Arizona. There aren't a whole lot of people who actually consider 100 degrees comfortable.
Where I am today it is in the high 70's and, IMHO, uncomfortably hot. Now granted a lot of that depends on what you are doing/wearing. At lunch today I had to go home and have lunch with the youngest while my wife took the bigger kids to a splash pad for a foam party thing they were doing there:
- Even though it is only high 70's, when I got to my truck which was parked in the sun it felt like an oven getting in.
- I was uncomfortably hot all the way home before the open window and a/c finally got it down to reasonable.
- After lunch with the youngest, I took him to the splash pad to drop him off to my wife. High 70's is fine in a bathing suit or shorts and a t-shirt but I'm dressed for work in long pants and a long-sleeve button-down shirt and tie. It was uncomfortably hot carrying a toddler across the parking lot and sitting in the sun with him and the other kids while my wife ran to the van for some things.
I don't mean to say that high 70's is terrible. My point is more that this is getting to the high end of my heat tolerance for everyday activities. I go to work dressed professionally. Sometimes I have to wear a suit and tie. I HATE wearing a suit and tie in 75+ weather.
I think that certain areas of coastal California are basically a weather cheat code. The Ocean (or altitude if you get into the mountains near the coast) keeps the summers as cool or in some areas cooler than the Midwest and the latitude permits you to, as @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) said, throw away the scraper.
Outside of that unusual exception I really wouldn't want to live anywhere much hotter than where I am. Maybe somewhere RIGHT on the coast in Florida but even at that, only if I was retired.
When I was a kid we visited relatives in Tucson. They were very wealthy and retired and had a pool in their backyard. They had lived in Arizona for decades and despite that, contra @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) they couldn't handle the heat. It was funny, they literally slept twice a day specifically to avoid the heat. They never went outside until after sunset. So they'd go out on the patio by the pool after sunset and stay out until around midnight. Then they slept something like midnight-4am, then they were back on the patio before sunrise drinking coffee and reading the paper and once the sun came up and it became uncomfortably hot (even to them) they went back into the a/c. Then they'd take a siesta and get the other half of their sleep after lunch.
I thought, even then as a little kid, that this seemed great if you were retired and could afford it but for anyone else it would SUCK to live there.
Along the same vein -- southerners have long held the stereotype as slow, and lazy. Front porch sitting bums.
Nah, it's just that they know they'll die if they're too active in the southern heat and humidity.
You can handle it as a kid. Post-45 is a different animal.
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I think that certain areas of coastal California are basically a weather cheat code. The Ocean (or altitude if you get into the mountains near the coast) keeps the summers as cool or in some areas cooler than the Midwest and the latitude permits you to, as @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) said, throw away the scraper.
Some data on this and on @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) 's comments related to San Francisco's weather. I'm just going by WIKI:
Los Angeles:
- 84 is the highest average daily high in a month and that is in August.
- 67 is the lowest average daily high in a month and that is in December.
- 65 is the highest average daily low in a month and that is in both July and August.
- 48 is the lowest average daily low in a month and that is in December.
San Francisco:
- 70 is the highest average daily high, September.
- 58 is the lowest average daily high, December and January.
- 56 is the highest average daily low, August and September.
- 47 is the lowest average daily low, December and January.
Chicago:
- 85 is the highest average daily high, July.
- 33 is the lowest average daily high, January.
- 68 is the highest average daily low, July.
- 20 is the lowest average daily low, January.
When I first brought up a/c I mentioned that I didn't think a/c was all that big of a factor for California's growth like I think it was for AZ, TX, GA, FL. This is why. Chicago is hotter in July than LA or SF are in their hottest months. Note that the swing in the Windy City is 52 degrees from highest high to lowest high and 48 degrees from highest low to lowest low. In LA and SF those figures are MUCH lower: 21, 19, 12, 9.
Interior California is different. Twentynine Palms where my dad was stationed has average daily highs over 100 in May, June, July, August, and September and it is above 90 in April and October.
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@jgvol (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1567) Do you take blood thinners ? Several people I know take blood thinners and much prefer the heat over cold.
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Just hung a few strategic damp-rids and turned on the exhaust fans in the bathrooms and kitchen.
Tech said I could try and turn it on after dark to try and get some cool air for sleeping.
The evaporator coil froze so that means there is a freon leak. We'll see.
Good luck. I've paid for a few air conditioners lately and damn those things are expensive.
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@jgvol (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1567) Do you take blood thinners ? Several people I know take blood thinners and much prefer the heat over cold.
I think this question should be directed at @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) , he was the one who said he preferred 112 over 50.
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The other thing about being anywhere near (i.e. within ~20 miles) of the coast in CA is the microclimates.
CD touched on this with his discussion of Napa. Napa Valley climate changes quite significantly between the north and south ends of the valley. Sonoma Valley isn't far away from Napa Valley (a small foothill range between them), but climate there is MUCH different. Hence why the same style of wine, made with the same style of grape, can taste very different based on where it's grown, all within a 15-20 mile range.
Take where I live, for example (red circle in Mission Viejo). You see the Crystal Cove State Park, as well as the empty areas between Aliso Viejo / Laguna Niguel and the coast. Those are all low-lying foothills. Nothing above I think maybe 1000-1200 ft elevation. But they block a good portion of the ocean cooling. So everything from Aliso Viejo and Laguna Niguel, straight up to me is a lot hotter due to those foothills.
Look to the north of me (Irvine and Tustin, just north) and you can see that there's a lot of roads/development between the coast (Newport Beach) and those cities will commonly be 5-8 degrees cooler than where I live in the summer. I can see it in my car's thermostat when driving home from work (off the 405 in Irvine). The minute I get to where the 405 and 5 meet, the temp shoots up.
Look to the south, and obviously Dana Point will be cooler. Again, if I'm going from my house south on the 5, there is a point where I can watch the car's thermostat drop 5-8 degrees in a mile. But curiously the area that *seems* more inland--the back route from my house to Rancho Mission Viejo, I see the same thing with temps once I hit a certain point cresting a hill because it's suddenly not blocked.
Then... Go over the much bigger mountains northeast of me (Saddleback range in the Cleveland Nat'l Forest) over to Lake Elsinore, and you're talking triple digits for most of the summer.
5 miles can mean BIG differences in climate here.
(https://i.imgur.com/xMvqfXK.png)
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Good luck. I've paid for a few air conditioners lately and damn those things are expensive.
This one is 6 months old. I'm pissed.
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This one is 6 months old. I'm pissed.
Oh yeah, that is not good. At least the ones I replaced were old.
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@jgvol (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1567) Do you take blood thinners ? Several people I know take blood thinners and much prefer the heat over cold.
No blood thinners for me.
I do not prefer hot, nor cold. Dry hot > humid hot though.
California's climate suited me just fine. Neither hot, nor cold.
The PNW climate looks fairly appealing as well. Lots of rain, but the temps look nice.
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This one is 6 months old. I'm pissed.
Shouldn't that still be under warranty? I think I got a year parts on labor on my last one in 2021. 10 freaking k !!
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I think this question should be directed at @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) , he was the one who said he preferred 112 over 50.
Ah, maybe. It was a few pages back.
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Blood thinners don't really reduce the viscosity of blood (outside of a bad event) or make one feel colder.
Professional Opinion: Does moving to a warmer climate make your blood thin so you can't take the cold anymore? | Hilton Head Island Packet (https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/professional-opinion-column/article33554922.html)
One more concept of blood "thickness" may have to do with an area's altitude. Living at a high altitude will promote the body to make more red blood cells (to help carry oxygen) and hence "thicken" the blood, while moving to a lower altitude, such as coastal Carolina, could then "thin" the blood. But again, the perception of feeling cold doesn't have to do with the thinness of the blood.
Read more at: https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/professional-opinion-column/article33554922.html#storylink=cpy
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I was on Xarelto (blood thinner) for a while after my "cardiac arrest" event. They also put me on something to reduce my heart rate, which didn't make much sense to me, I was waking up with a pulse of 45 often. I talked to my doctor and he cut the dose then took me off entirely. Same with Xarelto, I was having frequent, as in daily, nose bleeds, and was bruising very easily. They worry about clots forming when you have an atrial fib of some sort.
Anyway, I'm good now. I get 2-3 nose bleeds in the winter when it's dry.
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You're between two water bodies on that peninsula, and those water bodies don't warm up like the ones we have down here.
Even further off topic but question for @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) because I don't know and I'm genuinely curious and basically too lazy to look it up.
How warm/cold does SF Bay get? Obviously the Pacific isn't changing temperature much depending on time of year and there is some water exchange under the Golden Gate but there can't be THAT much. I would guess that has a major impact on the temperature in Oakland and further inland as compared to the temperature on the peninsula.
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What, are you thinking of doing some real estate investing? :57:
If I did that, I would start with buying a property for me to actually live in.
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Even further off topic but question for @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) because I don't know and I'm genuinely curious and basically too lazy to look it up.
How warm/cold does SF Bay get? Obviously the Pacific isn't changing temperature much depending on time of year and there is some water exchange under the Golden Gate but there can't be THAT much. I would guess that has a major impact on the temperature in Oakland and further inland as compared to the temperature on the peninsula.
It feels like a cop out to say “it depends“, but it depends.
San Francisco is going to be somewhat to pretty chilly basically all the time. The East Bay near the water can get comfortably warm and A bit sweaty during the summer, but nothing like the south or Midwest in the heart of summer.
Go across the hills in the east bay or into the South Bay, it can get hot. Again, not south GA hot. But 90s, occasionally 100, low humidity.
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Yeah--in my suburb (on the peninsula between the Bay and the Pacific) it will get into the 90s a few days a year. Very rare that it will hit 100. We do get a little warmer than San Francisco, and a little colder in the winter. Normally it's about a 5 degree difference either way. 90 in San Francisco turns heads. That's really rare, I think.
In the winter, we drop below freezing only very occasionally. In San Francisco almost never. A typical winter morning for me is between 45 and 50. A typical summer morning is between 50 and 60--sometimes a little higher than that.
To BAB's point, the location around the Bay matters quite a bit. San Francisco is the cold point in the summer. North, South, or East it gets hotter. The further of any of those you get, the hotter it gets. San Jose can get pretty hot; Walnut Creek, and Sonoma/Napa the same. Likewise, in the winter, the further North, South, or East, the colder it gets. But, like where i live, it's rarely below freezing.
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Go across the hills in the east bay or into the South Bay, it can get hot. Again, not south GA hot. But 90s, occasionally 100, low humidity.
To BAB's point, the location around the Bay matters quite a bit. San Francisco is the cold point in the summer. North, South, or East it gets hotter. The further of any of those you get, the hotter it gets. San Jose can get pretty hot; Walnut Creek, and Sonoma/Napa the same. Likewise, in the winter, the further North, South, or East, the colder it gets. But, like where i live, it's rarely below freezing.
Yep. When I was there (2001) I lived in south San Jose... It was kinda funny because on the morning radio in the summer they had a pre-recorded weather thing saying it'd be overcast, clearing by midday, highs in the 90s, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
I mean, I was a good hour's drive from SF, but it's pretty rare in most of the country that you can go from a high of 98 to a high of 67 within an hour's drive...
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Yep. When I was there (2001) I lived in south San Jose... It was kinda funny because on the morning radio in the summer they had a pre-recorded weather thing saying it'd be overcast, clearing by midday, highs in the 90s, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
I mean, I was a good hour's drive from SF, but it's pretty rare in most of the country that you can go from a high of 98 to a high of 67 within an hour's drive...
That morning fog thing is nice in the summer. It’s crisp, and by 10:30, warm and nice.
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At least from the comments on here I think it is pretty clear that @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) is an outlier on the other side. Even at that, I doubt that he'd feel the same way if he wasn't retired and able to pay people to handle things like yardwork. I can't imagine that more than a trivial number of people would rather mow the lawn in 112 than 52. I've worked construction and there is NO WAY I'd want to do that in Arizona. There aren't a whole lot of people who actually consider 100 degrees comfortable.
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The grass in the desert goes dormant in the summer and in the winter. I only have to mow in the spring and fall.
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Shouldn't that still be under warranty? I think I got a year parts on labor on my last one in 2021. 10 freaking k !!
It is, for 7 years. So was the last one, but that was denied due to "salt air" causing rust.
We'll see about this one.
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I'm on a blood thinner until December. Can't wait to be off of it.
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I mean, I was a good hour's drive from SF, but it's pretty rare in most of the country that you can go from a high of 98 to a high of 67 within an hour's drive...
We have gone from 82°F in an hour to a blizzard and 27°F, but it involved some elevation changes.
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It is, for 7 years. So was the last one, but that was denied due to "salt air" causing rust.
We'll see about this one.
Many of the beach houses around here, even the expensive ones, use window units. They last 1-3 years and then they simply throw them away and get new ones.
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I've never seen any of my neighbors replace theirs in 5+ years.
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I've never seen any of my neighbors replace theirs in 5+ years.
It is, for 7 years. So was the last one, but that was denied due to "salt air" causing rust.
We'll see about this one.
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Some people have luck putting their condenser outside the home on the side that is away from the predominant breeze. IE if the predominant breeze is S/SE as it is here, put the AC Condenensor (outside unit) on the N NW side of the house to protect it from the constant sea-breeze.
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I think this question should be directed at @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) , he was the one who said he preferred 112 over 50.
No blood thinner, as I said I have just become a true desert dweller. It was funny when our trip got to Egypt everyone was complaining about it being over 100 degrees after being in low 70s for most of the trip and I was basking in the glory of the warmth.
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I almost replied to that particular post " tell me you've never been in 110+ heat without telling me you've never been in 110+ heat" and then I saw where you actually do live in the desert. I think I've only been in true 110+ heat only a couple of times without having a "feels like" adjustment. Once I think was in 1998 when the summer temps in Texas and particularly College Station were especially scorching for about a week. As I recall, it got up to 112-113 for 3-5 days. And the other time I can't actually remember when, but I'm sure it's gotten that hot a time or two around SE Texas over the last 40+ years.
We have been in plenty of "feels like" temps over the years of 110+ (heat index).
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I almost replied to that particular post " tell me you've never been in 110+ heat without telling me you've never been in 110+ heat" and then I saw where you actually do live in the desert. I think I've only been in true 110+ heat only a couple of times without having a "feels like" adjustment. Once I think was in 1998 when the summer temps in Texas and particularly College Station were especially scorching for about a week. As I recall, it got up to 112-113 for 3-5 days. And the other time I can't actually remember when, but I'm sure it's gotten that hot a time or two around SE Texas over the last 40+ years.
We have been in plenty of "feels like" temps over the years of 110+ (heat index).
I've been in Vegas in July and August. 115 - 118 daily. Not fun.
Different from humid heat though. It felt like when you open the oven and get that heat blast in the face.
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I've been in 115° to 118°F several times, it feels like you opened your oven, somewhat. I was in LV in 1980 for a conference and the conference rooms seemed to be all at 65°F, so I had to alternative going in to cool off and out to heat back up. I was wearing a suit back then.
Palm Springs got over 100°F recently when we were there. It was somewhat manageable.
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Tying this all back to the population trends:
If you are in the Midwest the advantage to moving South is that you get less snow or, if you go far enough, you can "throw away the scraper" as Brad put it. However, for most (ie, not @Riffraft (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=33) ) people that advantage is at least partially offset by the fact that you get an increase in uncomfortably hot months.
Moving say from Chicago to Atlanta you'd get an increase in uncomfortably hot months and you wouldn't actually be able to throw away the scraper. Obviously you'd use a scraper less in Atlanta than Chicago but the average daily low in Atlanta is only slightly above freezing in December and January so you probably wouldn't want to get rid of it entirely. It DOES occasionally snow in Atlanta. Worse, they get ice storms. Worst still, they simply don't have the equipment and infrastructure to handle it the way that places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo do so when it does snow it is a catastrophe. Also, don't ever drive when it is snowy in the South, those people have only limited experience with it and they have no idea how to handle it.
Costal California is basically a "cheat code". Both LA and SF have warmer winters than the Midwest, so warm in fact that you can "throw away the scraper" and they actually have cooler summers than Chicago so you basically have the best of both worlds.
Looking at population trends, this all makes sense. California's population growth took off well before Texas, Florida, and Arizona. That makes sense because California was "livable" before a/c. What a/c did for California was to open up the interior for development. As noted, LA and SF have pleasant summers but if you get 50-100 miles inland (depending on topography it can be more or less) you are basically looking at Arizona's climate and only Riff wants that.
Texas', Florida's, and Arizona's population growth didn't really take off until after a/c was widely available in private homes. In the half-century from 1920-1970 Texas' population only grew from a little below Ohio's to about equal to PA/IL/OH. In the half-century from 1970-2020 Texas' population exploded to more than any two of PA/IL/OH.
I'm still at a loss to explain Pennsylvania's decline at least relative to Ohio and Michigan. I think that @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) 's theory that major Cities like NYC and Chicago draw people from the entire region not just the state explains PA's decline relative to NY and IL but, as I see it, Philly and Pittsburg aren't substantially less of a draw than Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, or Cincinnati.
Here are some numbers to illustrate the change: In the late-1800s and early 1900s Pennsylvania's population was around half-again Ohio's and around two-and-a-half times Michigan's. The peak for PA relative to both OH and MI was in 1910 when PA's population was 161% of Ohio's and 273% of Michigan's. Ninety years later in 2000 Pennsylvania's population was only about 8% more than OH's and 24% more than MI's. It has recovered a little in the last two censuses but it is still only about 10% over Ohio's and 29% over Michigan's.
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The grass in the desert goes dormant in the summer and in the winter. I only have to mow in the spring and fall.
I would never plant grass in the desert. Why plant something you have to water to keep it alive and then have to cut it on a regular basis. I have artifical turf in part of my backyard and rock in the front and back and desert plants and cacti spread around it.
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I almost replied to that particular post " tell me you've never been in 110+ heat without telling me you've never been in 110+ heat" and then I saw where you actually do live in the desert. I think I've only been in true 110+ heat only a couple of times without having a "feels like" adjustment. Once I think was in 1998 when the summer temps in Texas and particularly College Station were especially scorching for about a week. As I recall, it got up to 112-113 for 3-5 days. And the other time I can't actually remember when, but I'm sure it's gotten that hot a time or two around SE Texas over the last 40+ years.
We have been in plenty of "feels like" temps over the years of 110+ (heat index).
The only time I don't like it over 100 degrees is when I am officiating a football game and it is 9pm and still 100.
BTW don't get me wrong, if I live in a high humidity location, I would hate the heat. There are a couple of weeks during monsoon season that the humidity gets too high.
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No blood thinner, as I said I have just become a true desert dweller. It was funny when our trip got to Egypt everyone was complaining about it being over 100 degrees after being in low 70s for most of the trip and I was basking in the glory of the warmth.
How long does it truly get hot in your area (Arizona I think from your previous posts)? For here, in SE Texas, it gets super hot from about May until at least September. July, August, and September are usually the worst, with August being the Hot King and closely followed by September. It's not unusual to have a super hot September that almost rivals August, but usually by the end of the month things start to cool somewhat.
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Ehhh. More than a few lake ports in those cities.
Those northern places did have certain natural things, which fed factories. But certian products were made cheaper elsewhere, or resources were stripped away to a degree.
Southern infrastructure also caught up too, in a grander scale.
Well, I think that any saltwater port would vastly trump any inland (river or great lakes port). I just checked the list for the #1 ports by tonnage in the US and you don't even see an inland (freshwater port) until you get to #26. Not trying to be a dick about it since I really know nothing about shipping on the Great Lakes or even some of the larger rivers but I'd think there is no comparison. I just looked and the Port of Houston is rated #1 (tonnage).
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For my own county, population growth has been incredible. Here's what AI says:
(https://i.imgur.com/HGSryZr.png)
Now, it's true that we're adjacent to Houston and a lot of that is driven by the growth of Houston but we do have a very robust economy in the southern part of the county (where I live). One of the reasons for that is that there is a natural salt-dome here, and in fact there is multiple salt-domes in this county. We also have a large man-made port (I have a picture of my Great Grandfather standing on dry-land with a bridge being built over the diversion channel). Our port is rated #16 in the country.
They use the salt domes to store hydrocarbons, one is called Bryan Mound and it is part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve created in the 1970's. There are a couple more around. They mine the salt (brine) out and store hydrocarbons there in vast quantities that you could not otherwise store in above-ground tanks. They used to say that well # (whatever) could store X the volume of the astrodome (vacant for 25 years, the astrodome, not the wells). They started building petrochemical plants here in the 1940's and earlier due to the location of the salt domes, the port, and oil supply. It's also close to the Houston ship channel. They use the brine to manufacture all sorts of things from chlorine and formerly magnesium. The magnesium supplied from the plants here were very crucial to our WWII effort. They quit making mag here 30 years ago, but for about 40-50 years were were the number one supplier in the world. We have since transitioned to plastics, petrochemicals, and other things. There are probably about a dozen or more major chemical plants in the SE part of the county and they're still building.
We also have had relatively affordable housing until possibly very recently and overall low COL. People move here for the jobs, and they don't leave because it's always been very affordable.
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In 1970, the population of Gwinnett County, Georgia, was 72,349. It recently eclipsed a million.
Resident Population in Gwinnett County, GA (GAGWIN7POP) | FRED | St. Louis Fed (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GAGWIN7POP)
They have traffic issues and no MARTA.
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My point with the above post was to point out that some things are just a byproduct of the natural features of the region. Access to ports, rail, shipping, pipelines, business friendly government, low taxes, and lots of land all drive this. In a lot of places like in CA they are constrained by geography. IE you can't keep expanding because you'll hit the mountains. Here it's just flat land as far as you can drive for hours, no natural barriers to stop growth. There's a word for it, sprawl, and it goes on literally forever.
I had to go through Houston recently. It took me 45 minutes to get from my house to Reliant Stadium (astrodome area for you oldsters). Back in the day, the freeway N was almost all cow pastures. There is still a lot of open land, thousands and thousands of acres but I have slowly watched that land get subsumed by sprawl over 30 years. Subdivisions, shopping centers, medical centers, the whole 9 all built over the last 30 years.
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Even before this discussion I suspected that I was an outlier on the lack of heat tolerance side.
If so, that I am right there with you.
We were in Cincinnati on Saturday for the Savanna Banna's game at Riverfront (or the Great American Ballpark as I've been told). It was in the low 80's and I thought I was going to die. We stayed the night in Cincy and came home on Sunday. When we left Cincy, it was still morning but in the high 70's and humid. Unbearable. We got home and it was in the low 70's and very comfortable.
I will take 0 degrees any day over 100. I can always put on layers to warm up but you can only take so much off.
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Many of our large cities are anchored by water, either a navigable river or an ocean (or bay). There are a few exceptions, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix.
As noted, some cities have "barriers", like Chicago can't go east. The urban sprawl gets really bad when there aren't such barriers and folks keep building freeways.
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Cincy down on the river gets really bad.
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https://twitter.com/FactsAboutTexas/status/1934999508657557977
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I've been in 115° to 118°F several times, it feels like you opened your oven, somewhat. I was in LV in 1980 for a conference and the conference rooms seemed to be all at 65°F, so I had to alternative going in to cool off and out to heat back up. I was wearing a suit back then.
Palm Springs got over 100°F recently when we were there. It was somewhat manageable.
When I get to those temps (110+) I feel like I can't even breathe. Just inhaling air that hot feels wrong.
Even when there's a breeze, it just moves from being an oven to a convection oven.
Moving say from Chicago to Atlanta you'd get an increase in uncomfortably hot months and you wouldn't actually be able to throw away the scraper. Obviously you'd use a scraper less in Atlanta than Chicago but the average daily low in Atlanta is only slightly above freezing in December and January so you probably wouldn't want to get rid of it entirely. It DOES occasionally snow in Atlanta. Worse, they get ice storms. Worst still, they simply don't have the equipment and infrastructure to handle it the way that places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo do so when it does snow it is a catastrophe. Also, don't ever drive when it is snowy in the South, those people have only limited experience with it and they have no idea how to handle it.
Nah. In Atlanta you don't need an ice scraper. If weather is coming in, you go to the grocery store and buy as much milk, bread, and eggs that you can, and then hunker down and don't leave the house until everything clears.
As you say, you don't want to drive. Not only is it dangerous for anyone when it's like that, but you know--as a transplanted Northerner--that nobody else has a clue how to handle those conditions.
Costal California is basically a "cheat code". Both LA and SF have warmer winters than the Midwest, so warm in fact that you can "throw away the scraper" and they actually have cooler summers than Chicago so you basically have the best of both worlds.
Yep. I just posted this in the weather thread, but it fits here too.
And this is a dry heat too, so you don't get a "feels like" that's 10 degrees hotter due to humidity.
Total cheat code.
(https://i.imgur.com/3D2YuIM.png)
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When I get to those temps (110+) I feel like I can't even breathe. Just inhaling air that hot feels wrong.
That is right where I am, same as @NorthernOhioBuckeye (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=40) said on the previous page. If I'm forced to do anything outside at 80+ I'm not happy about it and 100, 110 ugh I don't even want to think about it.
Even when there's a breeze, it just moves from being an oven to a convection oven.
This is so true. I totally understand the "dry heat" thing that you mentioned later in the post and at 85 it makes a big difference. I'll take high 80s and dry over high 70s and HUMID any day. However, this has a limit. When it gets much over 100 it is just plain hot and neither breeze nor lack of humidity can change that in any significant way.
Nah. In Atlanta you don't need an ice scraper. If weather is coming in, you go to the grocery store and buy as much milk, bread, and eggs that you can, and then hunker down and don't leave the house until everything clears.
This is true, and hilarious to us Northerners. A friend of mine was in Charleston and they were predicting snow the next day. He went to see the USS Yorktown and it was closed due to weather. Note that it wasn't going to snow THAT day. When he got to the ship it was low 50s but the ship (and basically everything else in the area) was ALREADY closed because it was possibly going to snow the NEXT day. I would imagine even for you after being transplanted to warm climates for many years that still sounds silly.
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They use the salt domes to store hydrocarbons, one is called Bryan Mound and it is part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve created in the 1970's. There are a couple more around. They mine the salt (brine) out and store hydrocarbons there in vast quantities that you could not otherwise store in above-ground tanks.
I leased salt dome land for hydrocarbon storage for a few months when the oil & gas business slowed considerably either in '08 or '09 and put a lot of landmen out of work. I was fortunate to be contracted to a broker who juggled a lot of different small things instead of one large contract like a lot of them do. I don't think I ever worked Brazoria County, though.
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I'm still at a loss to explain Pennsylvania's decline at least relative to Ohio and Michigan. I think that @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) 's theory that major Cities like NYC and Chicago draw people from the entire region not just the state explains PA's decline relative to NY and IL but, as I see it, Philly and Pittsburg aren't substantially less of a draw than Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, or Cincinnati.
Here are some numbers to illustrate the change: In the late-1800s and early 1900s Pennsylvania's population was around half-again Ohio's and around two-and-a-half times Michigan's. The peak for PA relative to both OH and MI was in 1910 when PA's population was 161% of Ohio's and 273% of Michigan's. Ninety years later in 2000 Pennsylvania's population was only about 8% more than OH's and 24% more than MI's. It has recovered a little in the last two censuses but it is still only about 10% over Ohio's and 29% over Michigan's.
Ok, I think I have at least a plausible explanation so I want to bounce it off the group and see what you think:
The key is to look at Michigan. If you look at the chart back on the first page Michigan's population expanded pretty significantly relative to most of the others from about 1910-1980. For much of that time, Ohio grew right along with them. If you look particularly at the period from 1940-1980 Ohio's population went from about 51% of NY's to about 62% of NY's. Michigan's population went from 39% of NY's to 53% of NY's. If you just kinda eyeball the trend-lines for MI and OH from 1940-1980, had that continued they would both be more populous than IL and PA today.
The relative growth of MI and OH gets lost on the chart because their growth spurt is dwarfed by the massive population growth at the same time and a little later for CA, TX, and FL but if you ignored those three the biggest thing of note would be the relative growth of MI and OH.
I think it is the Auto-boom. Michigan obviously had an enormous growth in employment in the auto-industry in that era and Ohio has a LOT of auto manufacturing as well.
So NY and IL had major cities (NYC and Chicago) drawing in people from the entire region while MI and OH had massive growth in auto-industry jobs and PA had neither. They were the #1 Oil producing state until Texas passed them in the 1920s and in the ~100 years since their population has dropped from being a fairly close #2 behind only NY to being about equal with IL and only slightly ahead of OH.
Post-1980 the populations of OH and MI have drifted downward relative to NY right along with PA. That makes sense, foreign cars got big due to the oil crisis in the 1970s so ever since the auto industry hasn't contributed to big growth for MI and OH.
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I think that is fair, and why I mentioned that jobs could be another factor. I also think that the steel industry was prominent in PA, and that's been in decline much like the auto industry. So perhaps they didn't have the same level of growth MI and OH had over that period, but they still saw a decline due to a job exodus.
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If you park outdoors here in winter, you will need an ice scraper at times. We get frost fairly often, snow not very often of course.
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I think that is fair, and why I mentioned that jobs could be another factor. I also think that the steel industry was prominent in PA, and that's been in decline much like the auto industry. So perhaps they didn't have the same level of growth MI and OH had over that period, but they still saw a decline due to a job exodus.
That makes sense.
It intrigues me because it is a pretty major difference. From about 1880-1920 you could reasonably accurately describe the most populous states thusly:
- NY is the biggest
- PA is a fairly close second then a big gap
- IL and OH are fairly close to each other well behind PA and well ahead of any others.
Without ever looking at the chart everyone already knew that CA, TX, and FL grew a whole lot and I think we all understand why.
That leaves the biggest change as PA dropping from a close second behind NY and WAY ahead of IL/OH to being WAY behind NY, near tied with IL and barely ahead of OH.
Another thing that might be a factor although it came quite a few years before I started my chart is the Erie Canal. Prior to that good coming from or destined for the Midwest had to be shipped overland from the East Coast. Back then Philly and Baltimore were "coastal" in that oceangoing ships could get there but they were considerably further west than NYC and Boston because they were on the Delaware River and the Chesapeake Bay. New York City grew very rapidly after the completion of the Erie Canal because NY became the "home port" for the entire Great Lakes region. Some of that recalibration may still have been impacting things in the later 1800s, I don't know.
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US States - Ranking by Population 2025 (https://worldpopulationreview.com/states)
North Carolina is growing pretty rapidly these days, faster than any large state except FL/TX. I don't know there is a single large reason for it.
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US States - Ranking by Population 2025 (https://worldpopulationreview.com/states)
North Carolina is growing pretty rapidly these days, faster than any large state except FL/TX. I don't know there is a single large reason for it.
Has a lot of agreeability factors.
Warm and southern, but without a lot of the Atlanta and Florida rigamarole. Plus a nice diverse set of places to land between major metro(-ish), college town ville with the triangle and a shitload of beach or mountain living for the wealthy retirees.
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US States - Ranking by Population 2025 (https://worldpopulationreview.com/states)
North Carolina is growing pretty rapidly these days, faster than any large state except FL/TX. I don't know there is a single large reason for it.
I *THINK* most of the growth in NC is in the mountainous western part of the state. Depending on location/elevation some of those areas have reasonably mild temperatures in both winter and summer.
Those areas aren't nearly as mild (either way) as coastal California but, for a lot of people, Western NC has two major advantages vs costal California:
- Cost of Living: COL in NC is a LOT lower than California, particularly the really nice weather parts as referenced repeatedly in this thread by Brad, and
- Distance to family: I think that this has substantially limited the number of retirees in SoCal and particularly Arizona. Charlotte is only 8 hours from Cleveland by car, 10 hours from Detroit, 12 hours from Chicago. That is a long day or maybe a two day drive. Phoenix is 27 hours from Chicago by car and obviously even farther from Detroit or Cleveland. Most people aren't driving that. If you have family back in the Midwest or Northeast that you plan to visit periodically it is a lot easier to do that from a retirement home in Charlotte (or Atlanta like you) than it is from Phoenix or LA.
Wiki doesn't have the same climate chart for Charlotte that I used for Chicago, LA, SF, etc but they do say this: "On average, there are 59 nights per year that drop to or below freezing, and only 1.5 days that fail to rise above freezing." That is a lot milder than most of the Midwest. I also *THINK* that their summers are either milder or not much worse than typical Midwest summers. That isn't as mild as coastal California but if you can't afford to live in Malibu and want to visit grandkids in Cleveland/Detroit/Chicago but don't have unlimited funds for airfare, I could see Charlotte as a pretty attractive option.
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Has a lot of agreeability factors.
Warm and southern, but without a lot of the Atlanta and Florida rigamarole. Plus a nice diverse set of places to land between major metro(-ish), college town ville with the triangle and a shitload of beach or mountain living for the wealthy retirees.
Which is?
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NC climate is basically the same as GA climate and SC climate and AL climate. I think a lot of the growth is around Charlotte and Raleigh (Research Triangle Area) and in the Piedmont, not in the mountains as much.
(https://i.imgur.com/woM82es.png)
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I would never plant grass in the desert. Why plant something you have to water to keep it alive and then have to cut it on a regular basis. I have artifical turf in part of my backyard and rock in the front and back and desert plants and cacti spread around it.
Doesn't the artificial turf burn your feet when it's 110?
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I *THINK* most of the growth in NC is in the mountainous western part of the state. Depending on location/elevation some of those areas have reasonably mild temperatures in both winter and summer.
Those areas aren't nearly as mild (either way) as coastal California but, for a lot of people, Western NC has two major advantages vs costal California:
- Cost of Living: COL in NC is a LOT lower than California, particularly the really nice weather parts as referenced repeatedly in this thread by Brad, and
- Distance to family: I think that this has substantially limited the number of retirees in SoCal and particularly Arizona. Charlotte is only 8 hours from Cleveland by car, 10 hours from Detroit, 12 hours from Chicago. That is a long day or maybe a two day drive. Phoenix is 27 hours from Chicago by car and obviously even farther from Detroit or Cleveland. Most people aren't driving that. If you have family back in the Midwest or Northeast that you plan to visit periodically it is a lot easier to do that from a retirement home in Charlotte (or Atlanta like you) than it is from Phoenix or LA.
Wiki doesn't have the same climate chart for Charlotte that I used for Chicago, LA, SF, etc but they do say this: "On average, there are 59 nights per year that drop to or below freezing, and only 1.5 days that fail to rise above freezing." That is a lot milder than most of the Midwest. I also *THINK* that their summers are either milder or not much worse than typical Midwest summers. That isn't as mild as coastal California but if you can't afford to live in Malibu and want to visit grandkids in Cleveland/Detroit/Chicago but don't have unlimited funds for airfare, I could see Charlotte as a pretty attractive option.
There's a pretty massive tech presence in the RTP area. In fact, this has NC on one of my "possible relocation sites" lists if the right job came along.
Charlotte isn't as strong in tech, although I do have a buddy there in tech.
I do think that's also true re: distance. Things out West are VERY spread out. My buddy in Charlotte is a college buddy who grew up in the Indianapolis area. I do think he likes being driving distance from his family as opposed to when he lived out here and you simply can't reasonably get there without getting on a plane. Of course, his wife grew up here, so I'm not sure if she's quite as happy about it lol...
And the weather is true. Not THAT bad in the winter, and the summers are probably a little longer and stronger than the Midwest, but aren't as bad as further South.
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(https://i.imgur.com/EWgZdcB.png)
The summers in Chapel Hill were in no way cooler than in Atlanta. It maybe snowed a bit more often, that was also rare, once or twice a year. Charlotte is a biggish financial town, a lot of banks. The Research Triangle area is pretty obvious in the map above, where you also have UNC/Duke/NCSU within a 30 mile radius. Oddly enough, Wake Forest U. is not in Wake County today.
Anyway, the state is growing faster than Georgia, which I find interesting. A good bit of both states are agricultural/small towns.
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I do think that's also true re: distance. Things out West are VERY spread out. My buddy in Charlotte is a college buddy who grew up in the Indianapolis area. I do think he likes being driving distance from his family as opposed to when he lived out here and you simply can't reasonably get there without getting on a plane. Of course, his wife grew up here, so I'm not sure if she's quite as happy about it lol...
I'm curious, how do you feel about it?
For me it would be a MAJOR impediment. Suppose I had an offer tomorrow in a suburb of LA of SF that was enough money to achieve my lifestyle here but out there.
Ok, great but I have an elderly mother that I deal with the nursing home for and visit at least weekly. I also have a niece and two nephews and my kids get to see Grandmas, Uncles, Aunts, and their cousins fairly frequently.
A job in say Atlanta or Charlotte wouldn't be too awfully bad (too hot for me but just talking distance). That would be a one-day drive so I could get back once in a while and my kids would see their cousins a few times a year. A job in LA or SF? Yikes. Driving is a humongous endeavor. I've done that drive, it is REALLY far and unlike driving, flying obviously gets more expensive each time you add a passenger. It would be prohibitively expensive for me to fly my family back home from California.
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Alligator populations:
(https://i.imgur.com/niQFdxa.png)
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I don't think folks realize the gator population in Texas before they more there
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I'm curious, how do you feel about it?
Ehh, I'm not a good test case for that. My own personality issues and my long-term slow drift away from my family makes it a bit of a non-issue for me. It's not that there are any actual issues or problems... I've just sort of made a slow retreat from a lot of things over the last several years.
On the bright side, my parents now live in the Denver area, so they're a lot closer. But I haven't seen them since 2021, when my mom was seemingly on death's door (she got better). But that, again, is a me problem...
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NC climate is basically the same as GA climate and SC climate and AL climate. I think a lot of the growth is around Charlotte and Raleigh (Research Triangle Area) and in the Piedmont, not in the mountains as much.
(https://i.imgur.com/woM82es.png)
Closer to GA than SC. And yes, A lot of it is around those two metros, But I’ve heard they’ve also become a decent retirement spot in the mountains or out at the beach.
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Which is?
I can give you a fuller list if you'd like, but the state has a reputation for being "a lot" and having some natural extremities that a lot of folks might not want to deal with.
Not a slight, just might not be everyone's cup of tea, especially when already leaving a region.
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NC would be a decent retirement state except for their taxes. They have a personal property tax that really rubbed me the wrong way.
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NC would be a decent retirement state except for their taxes. They have a personal property tax that really rubbed me the wrong way.
Admittedly I haven't looked at that. I figure everywhere tax-wise is better than here :57:
My BIL just moved from San Antonio back here with his family to CA, as he got a job with the Huntington Beach FD. It's going to be crushing for him tax-wise... In Texas he had no income tax. And as a disabled vet in Texas, he had no property tax... Which was saving a LOT of money. Here in CA he'll have both. (I.e. even if they rent for a while, they're still paying property tax via their landlord.)
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I was just annoyed as a graduate student I had to pony up about $60 a year on my meager property while renting. My problem is I didn't cheat filling out the form.
I left without paying the last bill, and they came after me a few months later, for their measely $60.
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My cousin and her husband bought a nice place near the mountains near Murphy, NC that they like. we visited them, it seemed pretty decent place if you're OK with pretty rural areas. (My wife likes city life.)
Before I met her I had vague ideas about retirement, maybe 20 acres in north Georgia near the mountains with a lot of dogs. My other idea was to sell everything and get a small RV and see the country for a while. My wife is VERY VERY negative on anything related to RVs. It has to do with their image in France.
So, we stay at Hiltons instead.
I do like it here, fortunately, as we plan to be here a while depending on health etc. She worries what might happen if I go first but I have pretty well provided for her. She could sell this place and buy a 2 bdr in the same building if she wanted.
States that have mountains and beaches both are pretty nice I think. I like Virginia a lot (mostly). South Carolina might be underappreciated by a lot of folks. Greenville is a pretty nice small city I think.
I THINK that Triangle area in NC is where their growth is really taking off. It's in the piedmont region, hilly, gets hot, gets chilly.
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My other idea was to sell everything and get a small RV and see the country for a while. My wife is VERY VERY negative on anything related to RVs. It has to do with their image in France.
Yeah, if you've ever watched the old BBC "Top Gear" or the reboot on Amazon, "Grand Tour", you see that the euro opinion of RV--or as they call them, "caravan"--is quite low :57:
I do like it here, fortunately, as we plan to be here a while depending on health etc. She worries what might happen if I go first but I have pretty well provided for her. She could sell this place and buy a 2 bdr in the same building if she wanted.
One aspect of where you are vs some 20 acre compound in north GA is that you are VERY close to emergency services.
My wife's mom & stepdad made the move up to southern OR, and as part of that (selling a property in SoCal) had the opportunity to build their dream house. It was well outside the city limits and rural. They were on roughly an acre or so I think... Had a gorgeous house. Everything they wanted. But as they started aging... And then things like snowstorms (even though they had a generator) happened... They started wondering what might happen if they had a health problem when nobody could get to them. They sadly ended up leaving there and moving closer to a place where they could be reached if bad things happened. Then moved out to the suburbs/exurbs of San Antonio but are still far more reachable by emergency services than where they were with their first house in OR.
As one ages, I think this is an important consideration. When 10, or even 30, minutes might be the difference between recovering with normal QoL and ending up in a pine box... You start to value living closer to civilization...
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I’m just scratching my head about how some of you can go from Oregon to San Antonio, from mid-west to CA, and so on. Practically my whole family lives within 20 miles from me. A lot of the family got here in 1850 and we’ve been here ever since.
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Ha. My brothers, parents and I live in four different time zones. Population diffusion on a tiny scale.
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One aspect of where you are vs some 20 acre compound in north GA is that you are VERY close to emergency services.
You know, I didn't think about this, and still don't (often fortunately), but it should be a consideration. I have rarely needed any urgent medical care, so far, that can and likely will change at some point. We are now walking distance from a medical building where we had our post-op care and rehab, which was nice. We're also about 2 miles south of a major hospital that I did access with my heart thing (which wasn't that urgent really).
Funny memory, my parents retired to a regular house near Gainesville, GA in a "normal" subdivision, and he'd go to the hospital for lunch nearly every day. I went with him once, they did have pretty good food.
I try and stay out of hospitals in general.
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So, South Carolina is, in my view, similar to NC in many respects, the mountains are not as high or tall of course nor as expansive. The beaches are roughly comparable, no "outer banks" like place. I have not been in Columbia before. BMW is there, but the loss of the textile industry hit the state hard a few decades back. I'd guess land is cheaper than in NC for a similar spot aside from Hilton Head.
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I’m just scratching my head about how some of you can go from Oregon to San Antonio, from mid-west to CA, and so on. Practically my whole family lives within 20 miles from me. A lot of the family got here in 1850 and we’ve been here ever since.
Ha. My brothers, parents and I live in four different time zones. Population diffusion on a tiny scale.
I often joke that my parents raised all of us to be highly self-sufficient and independent kids... And then we all rewarded them by doing that... And moving to all four corners of the US...
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I have step kids and kids all along the west coast and one in Marseille and one in Columbus, Ohio. A reason for moving here is the large airport.
If I lived 100 miles NE of here, the airport convenience thing would be ... less, but I wouldn't have had step kids (who I like).
Here I can be at the airport in less than an hour for one dollar.
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I have step kids and kids all along the west coast and one in Marseille and one in Columbus, Ohio. A reason for moving here is the large airport.
If I lived 100 miles NE of here, the airport convenience thing would be ... less, but I wouldn't have had step kids (who I like).
Here I can be at the airport in less than an hour for one dollar.
That's one of the things I miss. It was great to be near an airport that could get me to anywhere in the world without a connection.
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The ATL is not the best for international nonstop flights of course especially to Asia. But it's decent. A lot of the flights are shorter haul connections of course.
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ORD is the only airport in the country (world maybe) that is a hub for two major airlines - American and United.
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Some overseas airports with a lot of international connections include Heathrow, Paris, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Dubai, Tokyo, Amsterdam, and no doubt some I'm missing.
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Brussels is a connection hub too. We've been through a couple of times.
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Airport is one reason I've thought about retiring to Las Vegas - I'm not much of a frequent flyer and don't aspire to become one in retirement, but it could be nice
not sure if Vegas has many international flights, but I'm really not interested in that
of course my brother lives within 20 minutes of the airport in Dallas/Ft Worth
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So, South Carolina is, in my view, similar to NC in many respects, the mountains are not as high or tall of course nor as expansive. The beaches are roughly comparable, no "outer banks" like place. I have not been in Columbia before. BMW is there, but the loss of the textile industry hit the state hard a few decades back. I'd guess land is cheaper than in NC for a similar spot aside from Hilton Head.
I'll be damned....who would've guessed that SOUTH Carolina would be similar to NORTH Carolina?
:)
Honestly I've genuinely wondered about that since I've never been to either. Parts of Texas can be so different from other parts but we're all in the same state that I take it for granted.
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Back on topic, it's interesting to me how many countries are losing population, birth rate is not keeping up in several more. I see projections the population of the planet would get to about 10 billion and not increase further.
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I'll be damned....who would've guessed that SOUTH Carolina would be similar to NORTH Carolina?
The Eastern seaboard up to about Maryland is pretty similar. You have mountains, the piedmont, and the coastal plain in all of them. South Carolina doesn't have a large city and is a smaller state of course. But anyone driving through these states isn't going to notice a difference.
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I enjoyed South Carolina - lots of trees
I spent most of my time in the lowcountry
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Back on topic, it's interesting to me how many countries are losing population, birth rate is not keeping up in several more. I see projections the population of the planet would get to about 10 billion and not increase further.
Yeah, part of the contributing factors to the current global political tinderbox, are that both Russia and China have some serious population/birthrate/demographic issues that are driving internal conflict, which is resulting in the kind of instability that leads to dangerous external outcomes.
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The Eastern seaboard up to about Maryland is pretty similar. You have mountains, the piedmont, and the coastal plain in all of them. South Carolina doesn't have a large city and is a smaller state of course. But anyone driving through these states isn't going to notice a difference.
Never been to that part of the country unfortunately but I do a have a 1st cousin who lives in NC that I've wanted to visit for a long time.
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Each state has those three parts which are very different from each other, in appearance and to an extent in culture and even accent.
The regions are a lot more different than the states.
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Alligator populations:
(https://i.imgur.com/niQFdxa.png)
The guys on Swamp People aren't trying hard enough.
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Doesn't the artificial turf burn your feet when it's 110?
Of course, but that is what you wear slide or something on your feet. I don't have much turf. and generally don't walk on it. This was my landscapers rendering of my backyard before it was put in.
(https://i.imgur.com/PLuCze1.png)
BTW while I prefer 112 over 50, it doesn't mean I want it to be 112. I prefer about 95 degrees with low humidity.
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turf gets some warmer than real grass but it's not like concrete or asphalt
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Of course, but that is what you wear slide or something on your feet. I don't have much turf. and generally don't walk on it. This was my landscapers rendering of my backyard before it was put in.
(https://i.imgur.com/PLuCze1.png)
BTW while I prefer 112 over 50, it doesn't mean I want it to be 112. I prefer about 95 degrees with low humidity.
Mines like 85% rock, but there's a small patch of grass off of each porch that you can step out onto without having to slip into sandals.
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I also do not get the scoffing of the dry heat. Anything over 80 out East, I'm sweating like a pig. 110 out west, yeah it's hot, but I don't secrete a drop.
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What DO you secrete?
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Uh huh
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What DO you secrete?
My pancreas secretes alkaline digestive juices into the intestines just to neutralize the stomach acid that could be remaining on the food.
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Oh.
I thought it was confidence.
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Uh huh
LoL, I can relate. My wife LOVES to sit outside and yeah, that is me.
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If you don't know who the image is of, please do yourself a favor and look up "Big Ed 90 day fiance."
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It has always fascinated me how our digestive system can be acidic in one area and then alkaline just adjacent to it, and how enzymes and microorganisms function in both.
This is some pretty serious chemistry going on.
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I had the Reaper wings last night
pretty serious this morning
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I also do not get the scoffing of the dry heat. Anything over 80 out East, I'm sweating like a pig. 110 out west, yeah it's hot, but I don't secrete a drop.
But that's simply not true. You're still sweating, but it's evaporating like it's supposed to and keeping you cool but not making you damp.
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First time I ever went to the desert (if Phoenix is properly called desert.....I dunno) the lack of humidity was unfamiliar to me, and very misleading. I was aware the temp was well above 100 that day, but as I walked around I thought "This isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting." After a while I started feeling funny, and noticed I was starting to sunburn just a bit. I realized it was hotter than I was feeling it, and when I drank water I suddenly realized why I was feeling strange. I was dehydrated and hadn't been keeping my fluids up.
I realized I equate "feeling" hot a fair bit with the humidity I'm used to that goes with it here. The dry heat didn't feel bad at all to me for a while....until it did. But for short stints outside I found it way more pleasant than 90 degrees here. Also, no matter what the temp was in AZ, if I got in the shade, it felt like a nice day outside. I was amazed by that. The shade only does you so much good here, and it won't stop you from soaking your clothes in sweat.
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First time I ever went to the desert (if Phoenix is properly called desert.....I dunno) the lack of humidity was unfamiliar to me, and very misleading. I was aware the temp was well above 100 that day, but as I walked around I thought "This isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting." After a while I started feeling funny, and noticed I was starting to sunburn just a bit. I realized it was hotter than I was feeling it, and when I drank water I suddenly realized why I was feeling strange. I was dehydrated and hadn't been keeping my fluids up.
I realized I equate "feeling" hot a fair bit with the humidity I'm used to that goes with it here. The dry heat didn't feel bad at all to me for a while....until it did. But for short stints outside I found it way more pleasant than 90 degrees here. Also, no matter what the temp was in AZ, if I got in the shade, it felt like a nice day outside. I was amazed by that. The shade only does you so much good here, and it won't stop you from soaking your clothes in sweat.
Dry heat will sneak up on you.
Southern humidity just punches you right in the face.
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Yeah, my personal conversion from FL heat to AZ heat is about 15 degrees difference. And yes, if you're out of the sun in AZ, it's fine.
In FL, it was just a given that on a hot day, your armpits and crotch are soaked before you even get to your car. And the shade is nearly irrelevant.
The best difference in AZ's favor is the utter lack of flying insects. Growing up with mosquitos and then having none of them was an incredible experience.
But also, with the dryness, you might get a random nose bleed in AZ and your feet go from perfectly good to ugly. Just lacking that daily moisture of rain (in flip-flops), walking confidently in lush grass (instead of everything being prickly), etc.
105 in AZ is like 90 in FL (with 90% humidity). Above 110 is just stupid, so just don't spend any time outside. The temps aren't a concern in AZ below 100, because it's perfectly comfortable.
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Dry heat will sneak up on you.
Southern humidity just punches you right in the face.
That is literally what I thought when I flew from Austin to New Orleans years ago. Austin is more humid than a lot of places, but it has nothing on NOLA. Disembarking from the plane and going through the airport, I wasn't thinking anything about it. I exited the doors at the pickup lanes, and that's exactly what I thought. My friend who picked me up asked how I was doing, I said when I walked outside it felt like a hot, wet hand had punched me in the face.
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Yeah, my personal conversion from FL heat to AZ heat is about 15 degrees difference. And yes, if you're out of the sun in AZ, it's fine.
In FL, it was just a given that on a hot day, your armpits and crotch are soaked before you even get to your car. And the shade is nearly irrelevant.
The best difference in AZ's favor is the utter lack of flying insects. Growing up with mosquitos and then having none of them was an incredible experience.
But also, with the dryness, you might get a random nose bleed in AZ and your feet go from perfectly good to ugly. Just lacking that daily moisture of rain (in flip-flops), walking confidently in lush grass (instead of everything being prickly), etc.
105 in AZ is like 90 in FL (with 90% humidity). Above 110 is just stupid, so just don't spend any time outside. The temps aren't a concern in AZ below 100, because it's perfectly comfortable.
Exactly this.
F'ing no-see-ums are a bitch here.
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But that's simply not true. You're still sweating, but it's evaporating like it's supposed to and keeping you cool but not making you damp.
You're poking holes in the science of my perspiration post, but you didn't open with the fact that pigs don't sweat?
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That's why bacon is so greasy....
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Exactly this.
F'ing no-see-ums are a bitch here.
That's not what they're called in FL. They're gnats.
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We have always had gnats in Central Texico, but you can actually see 'em and their bites aren't that bad. This year around here, there's a new kind of bitey flying thing that you really can't see, and their bites are worse. I'm assuming these are the no see ums everyone talks about, which have never been much of a thing here. They are actually one type of gnat, but there are many other types of gnats, which have traditionally been a lot more common around here.
Regardless, I dislike them way more than traditional gnats. I blame Florida.
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(https://i.imgur.com/8eziPaa.png)
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I just use something with like 60% Deet, ain't nothing gonna get near you with that stuff on.
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I just use something with like 60% Deet, ain't nothing gonna get near you with that stuff on.
Magic in a can. Always "Deep Woods".
You will be greasy, and stink, but a life saver on a southern US evening.
(https://i.imgur.com/SvpoJZb.png)
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Also, no matter what the temp was in AZ, if I got in the shade, it felt like a nice day outside. I was amazed by that. The shade only does you so much good here, and it won't stop you from soaking your clothes in sweat.
Yep, that was one of the biggest surprises moving from Chicago to SoCal. When there's almost no water vapor in the air, the instant you're in the shade it's an immediate relief as to how it feels. With humidity, that hot feeling is carried from the sun to the shade.
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First time I ever went to the desert (if Phoenix is properly called desert.....I dunno) the lack of humidity was unfamiliar to me, and very misleading. I was aware the temp was well above 100 that day, but as I walked around I thought "This isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting." After a while I started feeling funny, and noticed I was starting to sunburn just a bit. I realized it was hotter than I was feeling it, and when I drank water I suddenly realized why I was feeling strange. I was dehydrated and hadn't been keeping my fluids up.
I realized I equate "feeling" hot a fair bit with the humidity I'm used to that goes with it here. The dry heat didn't feel bad at all to me for a while....until it did. But for short stints outside I found it way more pleasant than 90 degrees here. Also, no matter what the temp was in AZ, if I got in the shade, it felt like a nice day outside. I was amazed by that. The shade only does you so much good here, and it won't stop you from soaking your clothes in sweat.
you always carry water with you whereever you go in Phoenix. Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate!!!
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You're poking holes in the science of my perspiration post, but you didn't open with the fact that pigs don't sweat?
Swing and a miss.
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I always see posts from others about how bad the mosquitoes are in their respective areas but outside of Coastal Tx, S Louisiana, or Florida I really don’t see how they could be that bad.
Case in point, do any of you have your very own mosquito control district, with spray trucks and planes ? If not, consider yourself educated that they’re really not that bad. Now that you’re educated respect your elders and STFU.
Sorry I just couldn’t resist.
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I hear they're bad in the land of 10,000 lakes. I think that makes sense, just as it makes sense in wet coastal areas. But I've personally never been to Minnesota in the summer so can't speak from experience.
Mosquitoes can be pesky in Austin but they're nothing compared to Houston, that's for sure.
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They were so bad yesterday that we got swarmed and couldn’t stand outside without being covered in hundreds. Just standing there continuously swatting , sorta like jogging in place except just moving all body parts so it took them 2 more seconds to land.
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My sister lived in Merritt Island, FL, and they were even worse than Houston. In her neighborhood, every single backyard had giant mosquito nets enclosing large portions, or the entire thing.
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I always see posts from others about how bad the mosquitoes are in their respective areas but outside of Coastal Tx, S Louisiana, or Florida I really don’t see how they could be that bad.
Case in point, do any of you have your very own mosquito control district, with spray trucks and planes ? If not, consider yourself educated that they’re really not that bad. Now that you’re educated respect your elders and STFU.
Sorry I just couldn’t resist.
Eat shit. 🥴
(https://i.imgur.com/iPDz84I.png)
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Mosquitos in the Midwest were far worse than they are down here.
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(https://i.imgur.com/g5BgeXE.jpeg)
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What are "mosquitos"? A kind of coast line?
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I always see posts from others about how bad the mosquitoes are in their respective areas but outside of Coastal Tx, S Louisiana, or Florida I really don’t see how they could be that bad.
Case in point, do any of you have your very own mosquito control district, with spray trucks and planes ? If not, consider yourself educated that they’re really not that bad. Now that you’re educated respect your elders and STFU.
Sorry I just couldn’t resist.
We had spray trucks in the Chicago 'burbs. My dad actually had his own spray setup (we had a large yard in the house they moved to when I was a senior in HS, 1.15 acres) that he'd spray in the morning if we had any plans to have people over that day.
And yes, as utee mentions, Minnesota is terrible for mosquitos too.
Pretty much any place that has regular rainfall has mosquitos. The Midwest has plenty of water.
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We had spray trucks in the Chicago 'burbs. My dad actually had his own spray setup (we had a large yard in the house they moved to when I was a senior in HS, 1.15 acres) that he'd spray in the morning if we had any plans to have people over that day.
And yes, as utee mentions, Minnesota is terrible for mosquitos too.
Pretty much any place that has regular rainfall has mosquitos. The Midwest has plenty of water.
Lots of wetlands - breeding grounds.
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Obviously, we have some here, but for whatever reason they almost never bother me here, and I'm outside a lot. I recall getting chiggers as a kid, they were unpleasant.
Boy howdy we're getting a ton of rain though this month.
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Since we live close to the coast we have a lot of salt water marshes here that are very much tidal and always contain water. Literally 2-3 miles before you get to the beach you'll basically enter a "desert" type area with no trees and no real grass and very swampy land. I call it a desert because it's hot, barren, and there is no fresh water.
Out of this swampland comes the pesky "salt marsh" mosquito that is absolutely packs 3x the punch of any inland mosquito. Several times while going down to " the mouth of the river" I've literally seen a cloud of mosquitoes and you could audibly hear the buzzing from some distance away. It looked like smoke except it didn't rise, it stayed at the same elevation and moved somewhat horizontally. If you've ever seen a swarm like that it doesn't seem real.
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Lol
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Yep, that was one of the biggest surprises moving from Chicago to SoCal. When there's almost no water vapor in the air, the instant you're in the shade it's an immediate relief as to how it feels. With humidity, that hot feeling is carried from the sun to the shade.
I do have a good shade cliff out back that provides an extra 1.5 hours of sun relief in the evening hours.
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What are "mosquitos"? A kind of coast line?
I think that they are referring to skeeters.
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you always carry water with you whereever you go in Phoenix. Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate!!!
(https://i.imgur.com/cXC3Fps.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4w0p9AX.png)
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you always carry water with you whereever you go in Phoenix. Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate!!!
I was way better prepared the next time I went to AZ. Walked around with a nerdy backpack with several thermal 20 oz canisters of water, lol.
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We went on a hike in Joshua Tree, it wasn't all that hot of course. My wife got annoyed at me because the sign said the hike was "Easy" and she didn't think so. She wanted to turn around and retrace but I kept saying we're almost at the end (it was a loop). She finally did turn around but we met someone coming from the other direction who said it was only a hundred yards to the parking lot.
The hike wasn't long but had some kind of uneven spots and climbs that made it a bit less than easy.
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I went on a hike with friends in Sedona and it was short, but vertical. About halfway up, I'm like 'fuck this noise' and went back to the trail head, found another horizontal hike, and enjoyed myself.
Meanwhile, 2 of my friends struggle getting out of their chair these last 2 days.
That was their choice. I feel smart for knowing my limits, lol.
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Canyon hikes are the cat's pajamas. Gradual climb, scenic, plenty of shade, a nice little stream of water, trees, vegetation, then all downhill on the way out. It's nearly impossible to get lost.
(https://i.redd.it/eepasgdpctu41.jpg)
Shadeless hikes in the blazing sun are for the birds. Especially if it's a steep-ass climb to an "overlook" where you get a great view for ten seconds, only to turn around and hike back down.
(https://hikestgeorge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/beck-hill-10.jpg)
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I recall a family reunion years ago in Townsend, TN. We all had out kids with us, I'd guess around 1995. We went up into the Smokies and hiked on the Appalachian Trail a few miles to a shelter to have lunch. One of my cousins kids, 6 at the time, exclaimed, "We walked all this way to eat lunch?????".
Several families had huge RVs, we stayed in a rather nice cabin at he RV place. I recall we had a fire pit and my son started putting poison ivy on the fire before I caught it.
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I went on a hike with friends in Sedona and it was short, but vertical. About halfway up, I'm like 'fuck this noise' and went back to the trail head, found another horizontal hike, and enjoyed myself.
Meanwhile, 2 of my friends struggle getting out of their chair these last 2 days.
That was their choice. I feel smart for knowing my limits, lol.
We did the Devil's Bridge hike in Sedona. I could've gone for a lot less people, but that's what we get for doing the famous, "touristy" one. Given my severe physical impediments, it was way more than I should've been trying to bite off, but as long as you stay hydrated it's a pretty easy stint for a regular person, I'd think. I loaded up on every pain med I could get a prescription for plus a steroid pack and did the thing basically high, lol. Two different nerve pain pills, a highly controlled narcotic, and the standard prednisone pack.
Can't live like that, but it was worth it for a half-day jaunt. All the swirling colors of the gorgeous landscape.....coulda been real, coulda been hallucinations....fortunately we took lots of pictures which indicate it was indeed beautiful.
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We did a hike in a pink Jeep.
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The ultimate tourist lol
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Not really.
The bad back surgery back in 2013 limits my ability to hike - my leg is half dead, and I have little feeling in my left foot. Can't hike but I still like to see things.
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I've seen equestrian only trails. In order to properly conquer the west, you'd need a horse, a boat, an ATV/dirt bike, a snowmobile, skis, a pickup truck with a nice camper shell, and something to haul it all in. Probably forgetting a few things.
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I won't be tryin to conquer areas any longer at me age
give me a golf cart with a beer cooler
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Just have the horse carry you and your golf clubs around the course.
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I want to be capable of hiking for as many more years as possible.
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Well you've certainly hiked thru Napa Valley & Sonoma County
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Being able to walk over 70 is a real blessing, and by "walk" I mean a mile or more, just walking. One's quality of life drops a lot when that goes away.
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I can walk as far as I want on flat ground.
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I'll be walking too much this afternoon looking for my golf ball in the hills with 99 degree heat and wind
(https://i.imgur.com/RAvK7jn.png)
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I'll be walking too much this afternoon looking for my golf ball in the hills with 99 degree heat and wind
that's what rec rooms in the basement with a Keg set up are for
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I'd rather be in the basement this afternoon