Desert Southwest vs. Gulf Coast?

Our plan is to move toward warmer weather in the next couple years. My wife lived in the Gulfport/Biloxi area for years, and we've visited a half-dozen times or so since then so we're familiar with it, but from what little time we've spent in the desert southwest we really liked it.

We're considering nearly anyplace from the panhandle of FL over to New Orleans along the Gulf Coast. Not being as familiar with the desert southwest, we'd like someplace that below freezing temps and/or snow are a very rare occurrence, that would also be on the outskirts of someplace with a population of ~100k+.

I'm hoping some of you have spent a few years in both regions and can compare/contrast the two. Specifically, I'd like to learn things that might not be easy to find via Google, or readily apparent.

Well, Not a lot of choices for you there honestly. You are basically looking at Phoenix area, Las Vegas, or El Paso. New mexico is really nice but it's going to get snow and December and January are below freezing for the average low for anywhere with population.

Utah will get snow and really Salt Lake area is the only place over 100K population.

Do you have any idea what areas over there that you are looking at?

You couldn't get more different in climates. I'm assuming you can live with the humidity of the gulf region? That is a deal killer for me.

There's definitely some serious humidity here on the gulf coast. What kind of info are you looking for other than weather?

St. George, Utah is nice - reasonable drive to Las Vegas (some of the entertainers have homes there), decent amenities, Zion national park, Monument park, Arches, Moab and Grand Canyon fairly close. Downside - the mormon influence can be a little overbearing.

Tuscon is cooler than Phoenix. Vegas has more jobs. Flag can get buried in snow and finding a job is tough (I got lucky). I'd aim for Reno, SLC, Bend or Boise if you want snow. Vegas or Scottsdale if you don't.

Pete, you did me a huge favor many years ago, and if there's anything I can tell you about living in Vegas, just let me know.

Some of my favorite places down there (Just moved north from New Orleans (state is bankrupt, probably not a good time)) and my wife's entire family is from the Ft. Walton/Defuniak springs area in Fl.

I like Mexico Beach and Fairhope, Al. Gulfport is very nice though. I would put it third.

bmw88rider wrote: You couldn't get more different in climates. I'm assuming you can live with the humidity of the gulf region? That is a deal killer for me.

The older I get I'll gladly take the heat/humidity over cold/snow. We've really been noticing the cold weather affecting our health & bodies these past few winters.

DanielCut wrote: There's definitely some serious humidity here on the gulf coast. What kind of info are you looking for other than weather?

I'm hoping a GRMer(or a few) may have lived in both regions and can give me a direct comparison, what they found good/bad about each place, and an "If iI had to do it over again..." POV.

In reply to EvanR:

You're certainly welcome Evan, glad I could help!

I don't think we'd want to live in Las Vegas, maybe in one of the surrounding communities? Boulder City seems nice, but the traffic looks like it sucks. What else is there nearby? We really liked the area out by Nelson, but I need 50m internet or better for work, and that place looked like a scene from Breaking Bad...

My wife is a career-long government employee, so we'll likely relocate somewhere with a good selection of federal jobs. Although she presently has over 20-years in, so if the kids don't linger around too many years past graduation she may retire early.

Pete Do you know of desert fever? My parents took a trip to visit friends in Phoneix and mom came down with it- it's something in the soil that is kiked up by the weather. Took her a good part of a year to recover.

I know it does not hit everyone, but some of the desert can be very mean to people.

In reply to alfadriver:

No, never heard of that one. I can tell you that after spending 1/2 day wandering around out in the desert heat & sun my wife and I both felt 100% better. Her migraine was gone, neither of us had any sinus congestion, and (surprisingly for both of us) our dry/itchy skin no longer bothered us either.

We both prefer the dry desert heat to the humidity of the gulf coast, but spending a couple days in the southwest definitely isn't a fair comparison to the amount of time we've spent near the gulf.

petegossett wrote: In reply to EvanR: You're certainly welcome Evan, glad I could help! I don't think we'd want to live *in* Las Vegas, maybe in one of the surrounding communities? Boulder City seems nice, but the traffic looks like it sucks. What else is there nearby? We really liked the area out by Nelson, but I need 50m internet or better for work, and that place looked like a scene from Breaking Bad... My wife is a career-long government employee, so we'll likely relocate somewhere with a good selection of federal jobs. Although she presently has over 20-years in, so if the kids don't linger around too many years past graduation she may retire early.

There are no "surrounding communities" to Las Vegas, sorry. We're on a geographic island. Boulder City is cute, but with very ugly small-town politics.

Federal jobs I don't know much about, but there are a lot of civilian jobs at Nellis AFB, for sure.

I've never even heard of 50m internet. Maybe it exists here, never seen it. I get 30 and it makes me frantically happy.

My wife and I visited Prescott, Az a few years ago, we really liked it. 100 miles north of Phoenix, but more important it's higher in elevation. You get 3 seasons and not the heat seen in Phoenix. Problem is, people from California have discovered it, real estate prices are headed up.

Water is a concern all over the southwest, which would make me lean toward the South. Cost of living on the Gulf Coast is wicked cheaper than here, probably than your area too. Add to the mix a few hurricanes and a home just inches above sea level.

I'll be following this thread closely; when I mention moving Mrs. 914 just rolls her eyes. After this past winter she is saying "Hmmmm....."

Click around this Gubbyment site for jobs, you can search by area or job description.

https://www.usajobs.gov/

Dan

In reply to 914Driver:

She has multiple alerts set for different locations on USA Jobs.

Also, I'm not sure there's any cheaper place to live in the US than our present location, but everyplace has its drawbacks. (I'll sell you our 8800-sq/ft building with 3500-sq/ft apartment on the 2nd floor AND our 1700-sq/fr house on about 1/4-acre corner lot with a 32'x24' garage and 16'x12' shed for $150k for the pair total )

The southwest water supply is definitely a concern, as are gulf coast storms. At least you know the storms are on their way in plenty of time to evacuate, but you never know what you'll have left after the next big one hits. We'd ideally like someplace about 10-20 miles inland and far enough away from canals/bayous to avoid both the coastal flooding & storm surge, as well as any backwater flooding.

Looking on the USGS maps it appears that southeast New Mexico and northwest Texas have the least flooding. That would include Alamogordo, Roswell & a couple other smaller places in NM. Austin, TX might be a possibility...though honestly we'd prefer Arizona if it weren't for the drought conditions.

I used to cover south AL and FLA panhandle and liked both areas. There are some decent towns surrounding the Mobile area. For some reason I like the Pensacola FL area, not so much Panama City (beach crowds). If you want to get away from it all, check out Appalachicola.

Our favorite saying in SC is thank God for Mississippi, but Biloxi area is nice. A lot like Mobile.

The Reno/Sparks area actually does have > 100k inhabitants, not that you would know it.

I find the climate very beneficial as someone who can suffer from weather-induced migraines (which nixed a potential job in Houston a year ago), but we do have cold winters. Well, if we do have winters - I ended up having to water our trees in January this year. Still, it's both a dry heat and dry cold, which makes it a lot more bearable.

My wife lived in Vegas for a few years (I only visited her there a few times a year) and in comparison to up here, the heat down there is something else. First place I came across where it was too hot to ride a motorcycle in daytime.

As EvanR said, the surrounding communities around Vegas are mostly populated by Rattlesnakes and other desert animals. There really isn't much there until you venture a fair distance into CA.

BTW, I can get (and have) a 60Mbit Internet connection. It's a business level service so it's not what I'd call cheap, but it works and I do get the advertised bandwidth.

I think I'd be ok dealing with the rattlesnakes if I was within ~1/2-hour of a decent sized metro area, and was able to get high-speed internet. And Tim, business-class is fine since its tax-deductible anyway.

In Vegas, you're pretty much either in town or have no Internet - there really isn't anything a little bit outside.

The have a few smaller communities up here within the 1/2h-45 minute radius from Reno, but depending on which one you're talking about, Internet availability in them can be very patchy. Last place we lived in before we bought our current house had not very good cable Internet, but next street over didn't have anything IIRC.

So I've lived in both NO and Out in Elko, NV and I currently reside in the Austin area. They are polar opposites in just about everything you can think of.

I find the Gulf Coast rather ehhh.

Too much humidity, too many nasty rain storms, too much crime in a lot of the areas, and the states are all broke. I had a good opportunity to be partner in a business in the NO area and turned it down as I just couldn't live there again.

It's seen it's better days and It just doesn't work for me. Shoot it takes major hurricanes just to get Louisiana and Mississippi to fix the roads.

I really like the high desert in the SW. When I say that, I'm talking upstate in Nevada or for me probably the SLC area. I can definitely do without the heat of Phoenix or Vegas. I will probably live out there in the next 5-10 years. It's just a lot nicer area across the board. It is a little more expensive than where you are coming from. I like the dry air and all of the mountains with the Mountain biking, hiking, and trail running in the Moab and St. George Area.

You may look at Texas too.

There are a lot of smaller places to live that get good services and there is a lot of government jobs. Allergies can be bad in a lot of the places if you have bad plant allergies. The only bad thing here is that the population grew faster than the infrastructure and it's a pain in the butt to get places sometimes.

I'm from MS, lived in Pascagoula for awhile then moved to right outside Mobile. I liked Baldwin Co. AL the best. Daphne/Fairhope or Robertsdale. Far enough away from Gulf Shores/Orange Beach to avoid most of the tourist traffic, but close enough to enjoy the area. The humidity is real though.

Slightly off-topic, how do you warm weather dwellers, deal with Big Spiders, Poisonous snakes, Gators, Scorpions, any other poisonous creature that I might have forgoten, and then there is too much rain & droughts I heard December through March is nice

I always thought Puerto Rico would be a great spot to live if you could avoid the crime on the island. It's got similar climate to Florida but the near constant breeze makes the humidity more bearable. Hurricanes with bad flooding isn't nearly as bad as mostly flat Florida, and its got a nice variety of micro climates.

I've resolved to the idea that unless I lived in southern France or Spain, or equally as expensive southern California, that I'll always want a bit of snow. What I don't want is 6 months of dreary, cold rain and sometimes snow, somestime sleet, sometime slush, with constant mud.

Flagstaff, Reno/Spark, SLC, Boise all get snow, but it melts and dries quickly, and although it may be chilly, you get 270+ days of sunshine.

In reply to trigun7469:

Not off topic at all as that's another concern too. If the pests make life miserable, then that's something else to factor in.

Obviously termites are pretty rampant near the coast & I imagine the mosquitos get pretty hungry anywhere near water/woods? What else is of concern along the gulf? What nuisances does the desert climate come with?

petegossett wrote: Obviously termites are pretty rampant near the coast & I imagine the mosquitos get pretty hungry anywhere near water/woods? What else is of concern along the gulf? What nuisances does the desert climate come with?

Mosquitos in non-breezy areas of Florida can be pretty bad. Most of my time down there has been spent along the beach where I didn't notice them anymore than up in NY Adirondacks.

Florida has got Black Widows, Brown Recluse, Nasty bees and hornets, mold, bacteria in water, palm rats and bugs, numerous angry critters and don't forget homeless!

Desert Southwest has bigger spiders, scorpions, venomous snakes (most stay off trails and away from people), Coyotes, some bees (mostly hunting for water), and cacti. Plague, Hantavirus, Valley Fever, breathing issues at higher altitude and skin problems if your body can't take dryness. High desert areas of Reno, SLC, Flagstaff avoid most of this stuff because of lower winter temps and snow.