Tornado Season is here

I have had several folks ask me why I don't move to somewhere where they don't have tornadoes.

If you move north from here, you trade off snowstorms for tornadoes, and have to deal with snow, salted roads eating your car, and a long cold season.

If you move south from here (the mid-south) you get into a lot of heat, and hurricanes.

The mid-south is not too hot, not too cold, and not too expensive as far as housing and services.
We have an early spring, and warm weather into late November, sometime mid December.
We have about 3 months of cold weather, but seldom get below freezing temperatures.
We get perhaps 1" of snow a year, and it melts off generally by noon the same day.

There are some really nice lakes around here, as well as some big rivers, and lots of kayaking streams.
And beautiful mountain scenery if you go a little further east, or north-west.
This region is really an outdoor person's paradise.

It is easy to travel to many places when you are in the middle.

I think tornadoes are a fair trade as far as the alternatives.
And a great deal of this country is exposed to tornadoes, so you would be really hard pressed to find a spot that did not have them, or if you found a spot, you could not afford it, or there would be no jobs.

Rich folks can move wherever.
Working folks like me have to stay put and make the best of the situation.
I am not complaining; I like it a lot in the mid-south.

I enjoy visiting out west with its vast open expanses, but there are not a lot of trees out there (other than the petrified forest), and water can be scarce. A woman down the street who came from California said they have earthquakes out there.

We have plenty of good water from aquafiers, and no softener treatment is required (we have the best water in the world).

Taxes come into play too, and where I live does not have an income tax, so that is a big deal as far as money goes.

If I were given the chance to move anywhere in the world for free, would I move?
Nope; I like it here.
Most folks are friendly and down to earth, although some city folks can be rather stuffy (I live in the city).

The rural folks are generally rugged individuals, and very self sufficient, and I like and appreciate that.
Folks around here don't wait for help from some government entity after a tornado, they get out the chainsaws, clear the roads, fire up the generators, and help each other out.

I always say when I am on vacation "This is a really nice place to visit, but I would not want to live here".
I like to travel, but I can't wait to get back home again.

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Generally the tornadoes will cause a line of damage along their path, and so it is a limited number of houses that are damages, relative to the total number of homeowners who pay insurance.

You can bet that the homeowner's insurance premiums around here take into account tornadoes.

About 30 years ago, the city across the river got torn up badly by tornadoes, and that must have cost many millions to repair.

Generally though, the storm damage around here is limited, and often it is just roof and/or shingle repair, and some tree removal/yard cleanup.

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GreenTwin said:

Running on a gasoline generator is expensive, and I have just been running the refrigerator, a small window air conditioning unit, and a few LED lights.

Cost for gasoline has been about $50.00 / day (about 15 gallons per 24 hour period).

Normal utility company cost for power, gas, sewer and water combined is $10.00 per day.

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Home & Contents insurance cost must be through the roof with claims running into phenomenal amounts of money for rebuilds & repairs, it's surprising any one can even get insurance in these areas.

All the power lines in the new developments locally are underground. We live in the country and I insisted everything be installed underground when we built the house. Expensive but worth it for the reliability. The right materials and installation make the difference.

In the 40 years we have lived here the storms have gotten progressively worse. Higher wind speeds, tornados are much more common than before. I am starting to wish I had put the whole house underground.

Green Twin - Good to hear you are happy where you are. I could trade the cold for warmer rain, but not for moving from the Family! People make a happy place.
K2

Mousetrap said:

Home & Contents insurance cost must be through the roof with claims running into phenomenal amounts of money for rebuilds & repairs, it's surprising any one can even get insurance in these areas.

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There are perhaps 1 million folks in my county, and perhaps 100 houses got hit with maybe $30,000.00 damage on average.

So it would really take a whopper of a storm to affect insurance rates.

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Mousetrap said:

Home & Contents insurance cost must be through the roof with claims running into phenomenal amounts of money for rebuilds & repairs, it's surprising any one can even get insurance in these areas.

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Figuring out if and where to move is a somewhat involved process sometimes. I was amazed how many factors wander in the more you dig into an area.

Obviously if you love where you are, are happy every day, and the location is not making you financially stressed, stay and enjoy, you're fortunate. If you hate the entire area, getting out will make your life better if you can swing it.

We spent several years looking for our retirement place. Once we had run income and related tax estimates and real estate taxes on all states we would consider the list was down to around 20 states. We then ruled out places prone to prolonged drought or brutal winters. I used to love snow, now ten minutes in 20 degrees and my knees become painful. I never realized how much becoming a geezer also meant becoming a wimp . We had to rule out a number of location we really liked because of the high homeowners insurance. All on the east and gulf coast of the US, all because of massive and repeated hurricane damage. Some areas were over $8000 USD for annual coverage of a $250K home. Just like real estate (or in Pennsylvania real estate PLUS school district) taxes, home owners insurance is a recurring cost you can't do anything about. Bad when working, a big impact on a retired couple.

We ended up on a small island in Virginia, connected to the mainland by a swing bridge. We're on the Chesapeake Bay, and in an area with a very low probability of hurricane damage or storm surge. About 70% of the county is in a flood plane, we are above the flood plane. Mild but boringly gray winters, a month of really humid heat in the summer, and 3/4 of the year decent to quite pleasant weather. Not an exciting place, our county has ZERO traffic lights, I think there are 5 or 6 in the county to the north, all on two main roads. We are within a long one day drive to see our farthest away daughter, and within 4 hours of our other two kids. Biggest thing is that compared to other states that initially appeared attractive is that we have a moderate state income tax rate, the first 14K of retirement income is tax exempt for each of us, Social Security is tax free (8 states tax this), affordable home owners insurance, and OK real estate tax rates. Down side is personal property tax on vehicles. This sort of sucks the first few years you own a new car although it is far less than the recurring unavoidable high taxes or insurance rates in other areas we looked. As we tend to keep vehicles forever, and now that I've retired we drive far
fewer miles, the vehicles depreciate faster than they wear out so the personal property tax declines over time rather than increases like many other taxes and fees. Don't overlook the cost of auto insurance. If you live in a state or area with high auto theft and high accident rates like parts of Florida and California you may take a big hit from this one.

It is quite amazing when you look hard at each state how some of the "best retirement" states have large taxes and fees that seem to be ignored by all the people who publish these lists. If IRA income is not taxed, or there is no sales tax, dig deeper. Check what homeowners insurance would cost for a given house that is representative of the home you are looking for in the same area you are considering. I believe it's Kiplinger that has an online tax calculator that works for all 50 states. It lets you enter almost all sources of income and amounts and see the actual state income tax you will be owing.

The Zillow estimated monthly cost for a given home purchase may let you find the somewhat hidden taxes related to owning a home. Don't take it as a solid statement however, I know that the listings for PA do NOT include school district taxes. A friend owns a nice middle of the road three bedroom. Probably about a 320K house in todays market. He pays a bit over 2K in real estate taxes, but over 3K is school district taxes. You pay those no matter how many kids you have or if you have no kids at all. We pay almost 5K less in annual property related taxes and have more land and buildings and also a three bedroom decent house.

New Hampshire and Vermont are lovely states in many ways, but not for total taxes. Delaware has many small to middling taxes that vary town by town, quite surprising but it makes those incredibly low real estate taxes not so low in some locations. They also make it hard to find, you have to go to the town and county web sites and dig down to find out that there's a police and fire service tax, a library tax, who knows what.

TWO THINGS THAT SOUND SILLY, BUT YOU MAY UNDERSTAND. If you DO understand these next two paragraphs and nod your head while reading, I hope you have already moved. If not, give it some thought. Our lives are so much more pleasant now that we have left a beautiful, but not nice, part of America. A family member was a deputy until breaking a leg badly while off duty. He referred to going on duty as heading to the high school reunion.

We did the local paper indictment scan. We used to live in a beautiful area, the Shenandoah Valley. It sure is pretty, but it wasn't nice in our part of it. Massive drug issues, lots of petty crime, lots of domestic abuse, child molestation, lots of the sorts of people who run red lights and stop signs. The local free paper would often have 20+ felony arrests reported for a week, in a fairly rural county. Drug task force would do frequent round ups and haul 40+ to the regional jail. Most were multiple real felony charges, not just piddly add ons. The county sheriff took himself out rather than getting arrested and charged for embezzling over 24 million from the county EDA with his business partner, the EDA director. Yup, the lovely Shenandoah Valley, sure is pretty... To compare: The free local for where we now live reported one out of state chowderhead who tried to go out for more beer when he'd already had enough, got a DUI. The other one was was a catch and release misdemeanor must appear ticket for pot. Which pretty much means the dumb kid pissed off the cop enough that the cop was willing waste time on dealing with him. That was for two weeks. It's occasionally a bit more interesting, but not enough to cover more than part of one page.

If the local paper scan worked out OK, we would go to the local (nearest, the local for us is 15 miles away) Walmart and drive through the parking lot. If half the vehicles had Calvin peeing on the other lifted truck makers logo, or were covered with obnoxious stickers or religious fanatic stuff (usually the Chomos, go figure) we would just leave. That was the Methaheroin (Shenandoah) valley revealed, we wanted to escape from those defective lifeforms. Parking lot ok? Go on in. Can you get to the back of the store without having to change aisles to get around loud and often vulgar family reunions that won't let you past? Can you get to the back and then to the front without wanting to start doing harm to people? If so, the area passes. I assure you the Front Royal and Luray stores in Virginia fail on ALL counts.

Naturally lots of other things are part of deciding if or where to move. If you love geology or mountain hiking and skiing you would hate it here. Surfing? Not here. I miss mountains to be honest, but I can at least get to some in less than a day. I don't miss clearing three feet of snow from a driveway though

Cheers,
Stan

Tennessee is called the "three states of Tennessee".
We have river lowlands and the mightly Mississippi River on the west, plains in the middle, and the huge Appalachian mountains on the east.

Very scenic wherever you go.

No income tax, and no personal property tax.

Its a great place to live, but don't tell anybody, because we don't want to get flooded with people who only complain about the time of day.

One hidden danger is that we happen to live over the New Madrid fault zone.
Most people don't know that the New Madrid fault is the worst seismic zone in the US; worse than California.
In the 1800's, the Mississippi river flowed backwards when there was a big quake in this area.

We had a pretty good quake when I was growing up, but nothing much since then.
So it will all build up, and then we will get another big one.
I don't live near the river, and so I won't get liquefacted like those who live downtown.

Politics certainly plays a part in where you may want to live.
I won't get into politics, but suffice it to say if you don't agree politically with most folks that live around you, you probably will not be happy.

I would take rural living over city living any day, but the reality is that I live in a big city with big crime because that is where the money and thus the work and income is.
We do like to get out into the country for extented weekends, especially in the Ozark mountains not far to the west, and that area is pretty pristine.

If you don't like rural folks, you should not go to the Ozarks.
We had some friends down from CT, and they were really abnoxious about how "rural" the local folks were.
Rural folks are "rural", but they will give you the shirt off their back no questions asked, if you need help.

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We are about to get hit again.

Get your chain saws gassed up and ready.

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GreenTwin said:

We are about to get hit again.

Get your chain saws gassed up and ready.

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Same here In northeast Mississippi. We narrowly missed being hit by tornadoes the last two weeks. Nine people died, in last weeks storm, just a few miles north of us. We’re keeping a close eye on the radar.

GreenTwin said:

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Hmmm. I have had nearly an inch of rain this last month... had to top-up the pond - it was drying-out... Frost some mornings, but there is still and "R" in the month. Up to 10C during the day... Daffodils blooming, grass growing (too wet for mowing!), no seeds for sowing... Maybe I should take up poetry?
Weather on a 6 hour cycle from something to something else... but that is the UK!
I feel for you guys with BIG winds. My Sister and husband were hospitalised after they were blown across a 15 ft ditch alongside the highway when hit by a small tornado on holiday. My Florida friends have regular bouts of Hurricane-itis. And (an American thing?) they are not allowed to store the window boards, spare shingles, or other building materials, in their yard for the next year's hurricane protection... Keeps Walmart in Business?
At least for Hurricanes it seems they get 4 days warning to board-up their houses and build indoor temporary shelters... store water and tinned food, etc. Tornados seem to have only a 4-minute warning!
K2