Well, at least you are horrible with a substantial amount of snow… Here in the Netherlands, a couple of centimetres of snow is enough to cause huge traffic jams. Hell, even the forecast of a couple of centimetres causes the government to issue a weather alarm advising you to stay at home, less scheduled trains etc. It’s pitiful.
My wife started performing a job search looking for a position as a dean at a smallish to mid sized college. So far she found a couple possible fits. Does anyone have any opinions on:
- Greenville, SC
- Rome, GA
- Beckley, WV
- One in Utah I can’t remember where, other than it’s not in Salt Lake City.
We don’t want cold winters. We don’t want to live in a big city, but it is nice to be not too far from one. One thing I need to come to terms with is that the crime rates are so much higher in the above places than where we live now. I’m guessing you can usually find nice places to live in most areas and avoid the high crime ones.
Did you perhaps mean Beckley WV?
If you don’t want cold winters than I think you’re basically limited to SC & GA. While I haven’t been to Rome, I think the fact that it’s a suburb of Atlanta should mean that it’s on a quick path to growth and better diversity than SC, so I’d choose that if I had to choose between the two.
Yep, sorry. Fixed
My brother used to live in Fort Payne, Alabama as a doctor back in the mid-90s. I enjoyed going to visit him. He’d take me to lots of walking trails nearby that went around little waterfalls and lots of rocks and mini-forests. Beautiful area. And it was a convenient distance away from Birmingham AL and Atlanta GA.
It looks like Rome GA is east of Fort Payne, closer to Atlanta (about an hour drive) and closer to Chatanooga, which I love driving through. I don’t think it got very cold in Fort Payne. It did get hot in the summers when I went to visit him, but the kind of hot that makes you uncomfortable at first, but once you’re out in nature walking around, you sweat and forget about the heat.
Even Minnesota winters aren’t that cold anymore because of climate change. I’d personally opt for somewhere that gets a little on the cold side now in the anticipation of five or ten years making that not an issue, versus living somewhere where they’re warm now and will become ridiculously hot in the summers soon.
I work in downtown Greenville (live 30 minutes outside in Anderson). Greenville has an amazing downtown, there is lots to do and it is really growing. Winter’s aren’t very severe here, you might get a little snow once or twice a year (a lot less now than when I was a kid, thanks global warming).
One of the things I enjoy is how much there is within easy driving distance: mountains, beaches, Atlanta, Charlotte, Charleston.
Little anecdote…
A friend of mine moved to Washington, DC several years ago. He loved it there but decided to move when he had kids. He moved to the Atlanta area, close to his wife’s family, but hated it there. Moved back to Greenville last year and he really enjoys it, couldn’t believe how much it had changed/grown while he was gone and seems happy (of course being close to his parents while having young children probably helps too).
I live in the upper midwest and while maybe it isn’t as cold as in the past, it still gets damn cold and for way too long for my tastes. This November has sucked and it hasn’t even gotten that cold yet. When we spent time in Grenoble last year it was soooo nice having a cold day be 35-40 degrees in December instead of 10.
We can always move again if the heat becomes a huge issue, but for now someplace like Greenville has 9 out of 12 months with temps that I’d consider nice. Where I am now, only 7. Plus, I can still do stuff outside at 90 degrees but I hate going outside when it is less than 20.
That stuff is nice to hear. How are schools there? We have a son currently in 7th grade and are pretty happy with his school. They really seem to care about the students and while maybe not super rigorous - seem OK academically. Plus we never hear about any problems with fighting or other kinds of violence. My son also has some mild autism that he keeps getting better and better dealing with. The school has helped him a lot with that.
I actually live in Minnesota, and hate the weather. I’ve thought about this pretty long and hard, as I do have a concern about moving to somewhere in the south and then having the weather suck.
But I’m coming to the conclusion that I don’t think you can try to think that far ahead, because of the nature of climate change. I don’t think it really works like that, where we know in advance what will happen to a given area.
We also don’t know, for example, whether Minnesota will get nicer, or whether the weather patterns will just make it even shittier. I don’t think it is as simple as just assuming everywhere will get 3-4 degrees warmer every day on average.
Unfortunately I can’t speak to the school system in Greenville other than to say my coworkers have no issues and I have a generally good impression of it.
In Anderson there are good schools. We actually home school our kids, although my oldest decided to attend public school for high school (and our younger ones will probably as well). He is in 9th grade, but attends the district Charter school which he loves. It is almost all online learning, but they do have teachers in the classroom to assist when needed. He is bused to the arts school for guitar as an elective. It amazes me the amount of different classes they can take today. Anderson also just recently built a state-of-the-art technology campus that servers the county. My son was really impressed when he took a tour.
Just wait ~15 years more years and global warming will take care of the bitterly cold winters :(
As another former midwesterner, might I suggest the Portland area?
We love the weather here. It’s a good 15° warmer than back in Chicago, and will be like that most of the winter.
I would love Portland, but it sounds like home prices and the like have gone the way of California.
One of the nice things about other areas of the south, etc. is that you can still actually get a nice home for $300-400,000.
Kind of.
Not full California though. Out in Hillsboro, where I live, a house comparable to the one I had in Chicago is about +100,000. So instead of 250-300, it is more like 350-400 for a family house with a yard.
So expensive, but not half a mil for a shed in the Bay Area.
Oh, we’d definitely consider that area but my wife hasn’t seen any applicable dean positions there yet. If she does we would definitely consider it! We spent a little time in McMinnville a bunch of years ago and liked that area quite a bit. They were going through a heatwave that was pretty hot +100s. The average temps are pretty darn nice though.
Yeah, I agree. We’d have to see what kind of salary they’d be paying. There was a really nice house in GA for < $400K that had a nice built in pool with a 1.5 story pool house with it’s own kitchen. Overkill for us - definitely don’t need a second house on the property - but it was pretty sewwt.
God, it’s shocking how cheap it is to live in some areas. Here that wouldn’t buy a 400 square foot studio.
Would you, personally, want to live in Athens Georgia?
That’s why its so cheap.