Looking for advice from Northerners who have moved south

[NoSuchPerson]

@clanter

But usually the auto crash is the result of the dude who moved here from the great frozen north and that dude wants to show off their driving skills by going 75mph on snow that on a bed of ice

I was on a conference call with one of my bosses a couple of weeks ago. He lives in NC now, but is from Michigan. He said that after the call, he was headed to eastern NC, a 3-hr drive, and the snow/freezing rain was expected to start any minute. But, he said, he would be fine because he had a 4 wheel drive vehicle. It was a video conference, so I couldn’t even roll my eyes.

As for the holier-than-thou Yankee who says people up north drive in snow and ice perfectly well, I offer these selected recent headlines:

Two Injured in Snow, Ice Accidents Over Weekend ( Minneiska, MN)

Multi-vehicle crash completely closes I-44 near Sullivan, MO (icy roads)

Snow wreaking havoc on roadways; more snow, ice, heavy rain bearing down (Iowa, Nebraska)

Crashes that closed I-94 near Kalamazoo involve estimated 50 vehicles (Michigan, snow)

Road closures, crashes, speed restrictions: Snow causes traffic problems through region (Pennsylvania, multiple crashes reported around the region as snow falls, coating the roadways)

[soloudinhere]

I never said they drove perfectly. I said they drive NORMALLY which is not the same thing. It is immensely frustrating if you DO know how to drive in adverse weather to be on the road with someone crawling along braking hard every 30 seconds, doing everything you’re not supposed to do and endangering others.

[clanter]

@soloudinhere

in adverse weather to be on the road with someone crawling along braking hard every 30 seconds, doing everything you’re not supposed to do and endangering others.

oh those are very easy to identify from a distance as they have all those bumper stickers from one side of the rear bump to the other side and the bumped is the only thing that has been cleaned off

[tbchick84]

[QUOTE=soloudinhere;n10023289 It is immensely frustrating if you DO know how to drive in adverse weather to be on the road with someone crawling along braking hard every 30 seconds, doing everything you’re not supposed to do and endangering others. [/QUOTE]

Oh my god, don’t get me started!!! You forgot driving with their hazzards flashing so we all know it’s snowing too.

[eks]

@tbchick84

Moved from CT to the Atlanta area of GA back in 1996. Couldn’t get home fast enough. Yes my house was 1/3 cheaper with almost non-existent property taxes, but that’s where the pros ended for me. Things I didn’t expect were many.

1. Road rage drivers. My god there are some really angry people there. Way worse that CT which I never imagined. Traffic that makes NYC traffic look like child’s play. Picture 7 lanes in both directions and nobody going anywhere. Any weather of the winter variety shut everything down for several days.

2. Heat/humidity/more heat…lung crushing humidity. You can take a shower, dump an entire container of powder on yourself and be soaking wet 5 seconds after you leave the house. Forget about a windows open season and listening to the happy birds chirping outside. It goes from raw/rainy in the winter to too friggin hot very quickly. You’re stuck inside with AC and closed windows from May to November. You could only ride horses early morning or after sunset. Even then it was too hot. I honestly don’t know how people do it.

3. Environmentally brain dead. At least where I was living, proper disposal of used motor oil meant tossing it into the woods. Got leaves? Rake them into a pile and burn them. Don’t worry about all that ground level smelly smoke making it into your neighbor’s yards. Have a boat and a bilge you need to empty? Just dump it into the lake.

4. Scorpions - Tiny little buggers and actually quite cute since they apparently think they are 10’ tall. Just don’t come in contact with one.

5. Coral/milk snakes - just learn the rhyme that works for you and you’ll be fine on that one.

6. If you’re not religious, you’ll most likely not like the south much. Religion is tied into most everything. Where I was, it was all Baptists. Everything recreational was done through church groups. You couldn’t join a softball team if you weren’t part of the church.

7. If you like to garden, stay out of the clay areas. Might as will try to dig in rocks.

8. Outward bigotry. While the north has it’s share of bigots, I was floored by how outwardly spoken people are down south about non-whites. They have no problems using very old slang terms to refer to non-whites.

9. Rapid development and urban sprawl. I think it might just have been in the era I was living down there, but I swear entire new subdivisions were popping up over a weekend. There were so many bulldozers and earth being pushed around, I don’t think I saw so much as a squirrel no less a deer or bear the entire 4 years I lived there. It’s just humans and more humans. Then again I was only 20 minutes outside of Atlanta, so congestion is to be expected.

10. Winter tornadoes. I didn’t reallize GA was in tornado alley, and I didn’t know how big and scary the January ones are.

11. Thunderstorms. I love thunderstorms, or at least the ones up north. The ones in the south are so powerful, you think the sky is going to crack open. I can’t describe how scary they can get.

I’m pretty sure I just picked a crappy part of the south to try, but that’s my 2 cents on the greater Atlanta area.

I live in North Florida and it’s exactly the same here as well

[allons-y]

Inclement weather driving? Try being a nurse, you HAVE to be at work. When I was in Alabama, the Police would come get you if you lived in the city limits. Or you spent the night/s so you would be there next shift. Wonder why Hospital workers carry big backpacks to work - that’s why. We never know when we’ll be home again, if we’ll be trapped at work again, whether ice or snow or tornado or hurricane or flood. That’s why we obsessively bring clothes and food and books and our glasses and our meds, and, and, and, and…with us when we work. My car is always packed for whatever, cause ya never know…

[JanM]

Atlanta is a huge metropolis, and isn’t typical. Birmingham traffic also sucks, and Montgomery also. Where I live (Dotha AL) is a real city, with a real rush hour, but even that isn’t that bad. The worst traffic is the main route from the beach area through our town, and going north, but that’s not that bad usually. I’ve lived in central and lower Alabama for over 10 years, and I’ve only had three days of real winter weather, but nothing compared to Colorado. And people here are much nicer than the big urban cities I’ve lived in. Here, if you run out of gas, or have some other car trouble, you’ll get a lot of help. Other places where I’ve lived, in bigger cities, you better have an auto club, because no one will ever help you.

[hank]

@soloudinhere

Somehow everyone in states that regularly get snow and ice manages to do it, so I’m pretty sure that isn’t true.

the one thing I have zero patience for is being unable to drive in any sort of weather. It’s not always 60 and sunny, that is one thing you’ll have to learn to cope with using some other method than outright panic and crashing into people.

States like MI, that regularly get snow and ice, have the equipment to deal with it. At one time, NC had ONE snow plow. For the whole state. It makes no sense to have $$$$$$$ into snow equipment when it only lasts for a for a day here or there. Patience.

[JanM]

The scariest driving times here, in lower Alabama, is when there is a hurricane evacuation in Florida, and the people who rarely drive are going north, in cars that are not well maintained. I was behind one that was so out of whack that I could see all four wheels, and that was scary. It also looked like it had hit solid objects a lot too.

[whitmers]

I grew up in PA and lived there and in NJ most of my life. When husband retired, we moved to southern central VA (clost to NC) almost 20 years ago. We love most things about this area. Cons are: 1) they do shut down for piddly amounts of snow - just gotta get used to that; 2) good hay was VERY hard to find at first. Too hot/soil too crappy for timothy and alfalfa. After years of establishing relationships with local farmers I can now get good orchardgrass and fescue hay, but I had lots of hay nightmares in the meantime; 3) the bugs are awful in the summer. None of these cons would EVER make me move back up north. I hate winter!

[piedmontfields]

I’m originally from the northeast, but have lived in the southeast most of my adult life.

A few notes:

There are many souths in the southeast, including:
-Large metro south (Atlanta, Charlotte)
-Coastal plain south (Charleston, Wilmington, Aiken)
-Transplant-Suburban south (Raleigh-Durham/RTP, Nashville)
-and my least favorite, where I currently live, the Appalachian south.

Do not assume that they are all the same!