The number one question we’ve fielded lately about St. Louis has nothing to do with public
safety or schools or commutes or affordability. It’s much more basic: “What’s the weather like?” We hear it from Texans. Floridians. Arizonans. When it’s 106 degrees in October in Phoenix, it’s just too much heat for too long.
It’s a meme that the weather in Missouri changes every 15 minutes. But that’s kind of the point if you’re coming from a place with 113 days in a row with temperatures over 100 degrees. Or a place where the fire season is now year-round, and insurance is becoming increasingly hard to find and expensive. Or speaking of insurance, a place where, in addition to your homeowners’ policy, you also need separate protection for windstorms and floods—and you can pretty much forget finding a policy that covers homes built before 2000 due to the severity of modern hurricanes.
It all makes the occasional Midwestern tornado siren sound like music to the ears.
Not to minimize the damage tornadoes do, of course. Missouri averages 45 tornadoes per year, a manageable risk compared to Texas with 135, Kansas with 81, and even Florida with 56.
Midwesterners who are considering returning to this part of the country tell us they miss
thunderstorms. And we can see why. There’s something majestic about all the flashing and
crashing. Sure, power outages can be a hassle, but we know which parts of the region are more susceptible to downed lines, so we can steer folks clear of those. And there’s always the option of a backup generator; plenty of homes already come with them pre-installed along a natural gas line.
There’s nothing better than touring with visitors on a picture-perfect spring or fall day. Yes, it’s true that, in the words of the erudite folks at Mizzou’s Missouri Climate Center, “spring and fall are transitional seasons when abrupt changes in temperature and precipitation may occur.” That’s part of what makes them so magical.
The climate refugees we speak with embrace the variability of what the Mizzou experts call “a continental type of climate marked by strong seasonality.” Since we don’t have any geographic barriers like mountains or large lakes, we are in a prime position for swings down from the northern Plains and Canada, as well as swings up from the Gulf of Mexico.
This year, we had a lovely little prelude to winter on Nov. 30, with a few inches of gentle snowfall, but overall, the amount of the white stuff that falls is enticingly unpredictable. One year, we might get 24 inches. The next,t we might get 8. Or 3. Or 15. The perception is that we’re getting less snow than back in the good old days—like 1912 when it snowed more than 5 feet, a record year according to the National Weather Service. But let’s be real. None of us were alive back then to remember it, just like most of us weren’t around in 1954 when it only snowed 1.5 inches.
That’s why kids pull out all the stops to get snow days, flushing ice cubes down the toilet,
placing white crayons on the windowsill and going to sleep with spoons under their pillows.
One transplant recently explained their motivation for moving away from a Southern location this way: “For $1,500 per square foot, I want perfect weather.” What that means is in the eye of the beholder—but for more and more people, St. Louis’ unpredictability is the definition of perfection.