Great weather but very crowded
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10/20/2011
I grew up in Winter Park (and for most people, it is just a continuation of Orlando). After high school, I moved away -- college, job, marriage, so on. My wife and I recently lived in Elizabethtown Kentucky; great people, beautiful scenery, quiet, and small government; but, it has some of the worst weather we have encountered (and we have lived in much more northern areas of the US). The wind constantly blows -- people there think nothing of 30 to 50 mph gusts. Because the jet stream moves up and down across the middle of the US, it brings volatile weather. There is simply no good season: flooding rains and hail in the fall and spring; flooding rains and ice storms in the winter; and the worst -- tornados anytime there is severe weather. It is obvious the local news media has ramped up talk of severe weather, as it gets ratings. But, really, just a cloud in the sky is not severe weather. In Kentucky, however, severe weather with threat a of "spinups" (aka tornados), is constant. So the weather radio going off is so constant, you feel like a mole running down to the basement to wait out a severe weather should it actually contain a tornado (or even the popular "straight line winds", which apparently allows FEMA to avoid any disaster relief, even if the house is destroyed). This sounds like a disaster movie, but my wife and I suffered through this for five years. We were fortunate to have no mortgage, so we could sell our house and move...to sunny Florida. I know people talk about hurricanes, and I have lived through several. But, you have a lot of advanced notice, the track tells you approximately where they will hit (coastlines are the areas to worry about). For most in Florida, its the flooding in low areas due to the heavy rain from a hurricane. And, its not easy to determine the low areas, as the state and Feds have done a marvelous job in trying to confuse the issue with umpteen maps and zone changes. If its really important, spend a couple hundred bucks and have a licensed surveyor provide an elevation certificate for the house (you may need this for insurance in some areas anyway). Your house may be high (10 feet or move above sea level), but your neighbor could be low...you need a survey to really know. Anyway, we love it here. We are renting now so we can re-learn the areas. In a year or so (perhaps a little longer after the housing bottoms out), we will probably move to a quietier and smaller area. But for all those thinking of Florida, there really is still a lot of room and you are welcome here!
William | Orlando, FL