I live in a temperate state. In winter and fall, you can expect people to withdraw.
In winter here, for example, you cannot expect people to make plans. You won’t be going out to eat. You won’t be spending time with anyone outside your home. If you’re not married or with a boo, you can pretty much expect to be alone for four dark cold months. After New Year’s Eve, all bets for a social life are off until May, and you can plan to shut things down socially around mid-October.
I wanna move to a warm weather state because I am hoping that people continue to keep up with each other through those months (because it’s still warm). Is that true? Or do warm weather places have a period of social shut down too?
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I think it would depend if it’s a tourist destination/beach town. Those places are busiest in the hottest time of the year (summer). Even when it gets cold in a place like that, it isn’t that cold, at least where I was living. I wouldn’t ever call it “shut down.”
I’m not going to do shit outside between May-September unless it involves a lot of water.
Not like up north, where everyone hibernates from
November to March. Life goes on, heat or not. You just learn to deal with it.
Summer here works much like winter up north, the only exception being that if you go out to dinner kind of late in the evening things can cool off a few degrees at night. Still, we don’t do a lot of outdoor activities during the day from about late May through early September.
I lived in North Carolina for 13 years.
It was pretty great because you could do outside stuff basically year round. I had Thanksgiving dinners on the patio outside. The weather didn’t shut anything down. In the summer, it was just hot, so we stayed hydrated.
So no, in my experience, there wasn’t really a “shut down” of any kind.
>In winter here, for example, you cannot expect people to make plans. You won’t be going out to eat. You won’t be spending time with anyone outside your home. If you’re not married or with a boo, you can pretty much expect to be alone for four dark cold months.
Jesus, where do you live, Siberia? Lol. I don’t just stop living life because it’s 30 degrees outside
The social shutdown of a cold winter is exactly why I don’t like cold climates. Here in San Diego, the only real change is that swimming in the ocean isn’t as enjoyable and you wear a sweater. Everything else is still on the table! It’s still sunny, even! You celebrate Christmas with a barbecue at the park.
I l have lived in 2 warm states, and never experienced any type of social shutdown.
If you can stand the heat and humidity there really isn’t a cultural shut down in the south: everything is open even the outside stuff. The main problem in the south is that we can STILL get snow, it’s not common but when it does happen it literally shuts everything down because the states down here don’t own the plows and salt trucks to deal with it
Sounds like you you live in the Arctic, not a temperate state.
Honestly people withdraw more in the depth of summer, but they’re still available for indoor stuff.
Most of the fall you just throw in a hoodie and continue on but in the dark. It’s not like there’s snow on the ground to stop you or 8 layers to put on.
Stay in the AC
We will quite literally plan gatherings around seed tick season . So summertime is no guarantee of socialization.
Honestly, that sounds more like an issue with you, your friends, or your family mostly.
I live in Ohio. It gets cold starting in Mid October and hella cold starting in January. The weather doesn’t get good again until sometime in April or May depending on the year.
That said, people still hang out. Life still goes on. Activities and such just move indoors. For that matter, you can still do outdoor activities. That is what cold weather gear is for.
If your social life shuts down with your friends and family because of the weather. It isn’t because of a problem with the weather.
I don’t shut down for anything. I love the heat and forever outside doing something.
Well I guess I don’t do as much during the time change when it gets dark early AF. Because I get home from work, eat dinner with wife/kids, and it’s fucking too dark to do anything outside with the kids. But weekends can still get stuff done.
Depends on how hot it actually gets.
I’m still outdoors doing stuff in the early/mid summer here when temps are in the high nineties/low 100’s: hiking, riding my bike, sitting on the patio, swimming, etc. Usually I do it in the morning when it’s cooler (low nineties) or in the evenings (same temp).
In the mid/late summer when its usually 107-112, I tend to kick it indoors, just like people in MN, WI, etc. do during the winter. I’ll still do outdoor activities but it’s usually in the very early morning (5am ish) to avoid the heat. You can still go swimming, play golf, catch a baseball game, and of course do all of the daily indoor activities.
When it gets really hot, 115+, I’m pretty much indoors during the day or vacationing in the mountains/out of state every chance I get. At that point unless the pool has a cooling system or is 7ft+ deep, the water temp is akin to warm bath water and not pleasant.
Of course your mileage may vary, some people cannot handle the heat at all and just hibernate indoors (why they choose to live here blows my mind, but usually it’s their first or second summer and they’ve never been in weather over 100 degrees and therefore haven’t gotten used to it) while others aren’t nearly as bothered by it.
Much like everywhere else in the country, daily life just shifts as it’s modified by the weather. Personally, I put up with the brutal summers to enjoy 335 days of sunshine and 70/sunny temps in November-April.
Edit to add from your post: there is no social shutdown in my experience. People don’t just stay in their house all day everyday unless they want to. I still see friends/do activities like we normally would and there are still all the amenities of living in a city that are widely used all year (bars/restaurants/sports teams/local attractions, etc.)
Certain outdoor activities might be too hot for some. But people don’t just disappear, they simply move inside until later in the day. Any water activities are definitely still happening though. Living near the beach and there are people in the water every day of the year. FWIW it’s completely different throughout the state. Closer to the beach or water and you’ll see more people outside. Middle of the state most people will be v inside longer
>In winter here, for example, you cannot expect people to make plans. You won’t be going out to eat. You won’t be spending time with anyone outside your home. If you’re not married or with a boo, you can pretty much expect to be alone for four dark cold months
You need new friends. I live in upstate NY and we are just as social in the winter as the summer. Still go out to dinner as a group once a week and to the bars on the weekends. Go to ice races, skiing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, ice fishing. If anything, we are even more social in the winter than the summer. It could be -10F and snowing an inch an hour, but we still go to the bar for drinks and the place is packed.
Sweat…
No shut downs here in Houston!
In fact, October brings very nice temps and outdoor activities become MORE popular.
I have often ridden my mt bike in short sleeves into late November and December.
If anything, some outdoor activities slow down in July and August, but pick back up when it starts cooling off in late September or October.
Places with hot and humid summers (like NJ or the South) can be pretty brutal. Sounds like you want a SoCal type climate
Are you in the northern plains states?
We don’t shut down like that. Covid has blocked things the last two years, but I expect that to pick up again next winter. Mid-October is still leaf peeping season, and, of course, Halloween and harvest festivals. I used to have weekly social activities throughout the year. I’m not into skiing or other snow activities, but plenty of people are. Friends can still go out to movies or museums.
You need to find activities that will hold up through the year. Join a club or a volunteer organization.
Sounds to me like what you really need is to either live closer to a city or just have a better group of friends. I live in Wisconsin so winters get cold but people still do things it just moves indoors.
SLC Utah dry hot was a whole lot nicer than Florida swampy hot.
In UT, you just stay inside around noon. Avoid direct sunlight. It stays relatively cool in the shade, and your sweat actually evaporates and cools you. Nights are cool (sometimes cold) and breezy. Id go up into the Wasatch Front mountain range where it was 20-30 degrees cooler and there were still some snowpiles lying around in shady spots and canyons.
In Florida you stay in the AC or in a body of water from about June to September. Your sweat cuddles your skin like a creepy drunken exbooty-call who crashed your stag party. There is no escape. The only breeze is near the ocean.
Sounds like you need to find normal friends. I lived in mid-Michigan which is farther north and much colder than MD and things and people did not shut down for the cold. There’s nowmobiling, cross country and downhill skiing, sledding, ice fishing, ice skating, hockey, curling, football, ice sculpture festivals… and so much more to do. And restaurants don’t close because it’s cold and snowy.
You need new friends.
The heat isn’t a big deal unless you have to work outside. Otherwise you can go from one air conditioned place to the next.
Oh you mean humid wind time? I prefer freezing wind time.
People stay in in summer instead
It depends what kind of heat.
I’ve spent summers in Vegas, Bullhead (Laughlin), Phoenix, Yuma, etc…
I still do my outdoor activites (I play golf and ride a motorcycle). Keep the direct sun off you and stay hydrated and it’s not a problem… to a point (somewhere around 110).
Also been to Houston, Mobile (It’s pronounced moh-BEEL), New Orleans, Pepsicola, etc and the oppression of the humid heat will completely ruin your day.
>Or do warm weather places have a period of social shut down too?
Not really. Maybe they do for outdoor activities (minus outdoor activities that involve water like pools and beach trips), but I’ve never heard “it’s too hot today” as an excuse not to go out to eat or see a movie.
The difference between hot and cold is that hot doesn’t make driving dangerous, whereas snow and sleet do. Extreme cold makes going outside dangerous, whereas extreme heat means you just have to put a sunshade on your car and only go where there’s AC.
In Phoenix summers people go from air-conditioned homes to air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned work or school or elsewhere. I’m told it’s the same way here in Florida (haven’t been here for the summer yet so i can’t confirm it). The reverse was also true back home in Salt Lake City: in winter you go from your heated home to your heated car to your heated destination.
>all bets for a social life are off until May,
What? I’ve lived in New England all my life and this is not true at all. People definitely still make plans and go out and do things. Sure once in a while you have to cancel if a really bad storm is coming, but you don’t just not make plans because it might snow cause even when it does snow (which maybe once a week at most usually?) It’s typically not bad enough to cancel. You just get an AWD vehicle and leave a little earlier…
The really bad storms that you just can’t go out in are like… Once a month? Maybe twice? And they last for a day and are cleaned up.
Where do you live that the place just shuts down completely between December and May?
Cause where I live snow starts around Thanksgiving and we don’t just hibernate for 6 months.
I don’t think Florida shuts down in the winter at all— but if you want to do anything with me in the dead midday of summer, it had better be going to the beach.
In the winter we do all your summer activities. In the summer we do them in really hot weather and more mosquitoes. Except camping, camping is reserved for November through March.
I no longer live in the Deep South, but when I did, summers were kind of that way. In the middle of the day, it’s strictly indoor activities or swimming. Younger people tend to do stuff later in the evenings. Older people tend to do stuff early in the morning before retreating inside for the rest of the day. In the warmest parts of the South, this can be 6+ months of the year.
I would say when the weather’s fine, we go fishing or go swimming in the sea. We’re always happy. Life’s for living. Yeah, that’s our philosophy.
Uh, American living in Qatar.
Just change the plans. No one does outside stuff in the summer, it’s all indoors. Winter, it’s all outdoors. That and tweak the hours to evening/night, etc.
In Utah we have harsh winters and summers but people stay active year round