Volt61

Have been unsettled for a while and want to move.
I don't like extremes of weather or very small or massive cities (London, Chicago, LA etc). Have no kids (nor wanting to make any).

After a lot of thought, I was wondering about moving to Missouri.

If you live there, would appreciate some key pointers and about the city you live in, but not so much statistics that I can find myself. i..e. the real living experience and not the one you may have been told about or read about.


Thank you in advance.

another bloody yank

I've spent most of my life in St. Louis and the surrounding area and I liked it very much. But if you're looking for somewhere without extreme weather fluctuation, keep looking. It's common to have triple digits in summer and below zero in winter and that's fairly normal for most of the central midwest.

SanDiegogirl

I lived in St. Louis for a year about 10 years ago.

Very friendly people; good housing; good hiking and outdoorsy things if you are into that, lovely Spring (for about 3 weeks) then a hot steamy summer with lots of mosquitoes. Winter was very cold with snow on and off in Jan/Feb. I remember having a puffer quilted jacket which I wore every day for months in the winter.

Husband could not take the weather and we moved to California.

sir_eccles

The wife is originally from Kansas City KS so we pop back occasionally for family things or football (Go Chiefs!). I will echo what others have said regarding the weather, they generally have all four seasons equally and to each extreme. Steamy in summer, bitter in winter.

Kansas City itself is a huge sprawling city, though slightly smaller on the MO side. Being English is very exotic to a lot of people there.

jackattack

My brother-in-law and his wife moved to St Louis for about 6 years due to his work. They are USC but have previously lived abroad and are pretty multi-cultural.
Neither of them really loved living there since, as previously posted, the weather was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter and they felt the community was quite closed-minded. That being said they lived in a lovely neighbourhood (Ladue), the neighbours were really friendly, they had a huge house (compared to what we could get for that $ in California) and it was quite safe.

They've just moved to Philly and we're waiting for the official invite so we can go check out that city.

PepsiChic

i had to giggle, dont like extreme weather? look somewhere else!

I live in hillsboro, Missouri (googlemap the zip code: 63050), im from the UK, my husband however has lived here his whole life.

its 100+F in the summer and -30F in the winter

not to mention the insane storms, with winds that will knock you over, and everything being hit by lightening all around you. My house got side swept by a tornado just a couple of weeks ago - me and my baby were lucky to survive as was my uncle whos house across the street took a direct hit ( i have photos of all the damage and a tree which looks like a wrung out wash cloth!) not to mentionn the tree which was dropped on top of our house and the fact that one of our cars was upside down further down the stree (i still havent found one of our trash cans either)

needless to say, missouri and the surrounding states (kansas etc) are not the places to live if you dont like extreme weather.

Try Washington, i have a friend up there who loves that state for the beauty, warm summrs (not too hot) but snowy winters. no real extreme weathe though, and the mountains are breath taking!

Edit: i just figured id mention right now its storming so hard i cant see outside for the rain, yet the lightening is gorgeous (it keeps hitting the cell towers near by and i got some good footage on my cell), a tornado was also spotted on the ground just north of Festus about 15 minutes ago, and the dopplar radar is tracking a funnel cloud (start formation of a tornado) to the west of st louis - which looks like its going to drop in Illinois.

Kaffy Mintcake

I think it's pretty cool that the OP is looking beyond the "smile" states to the interior. The US is more than the east/west coasts and our southern border!

Partially discharged

I spent a week in the St. Louis area this summer and to me it is far too hot and humid....some days were about +38 c for a high and an overnight low of about +25...in other words AC on all the time.

The -30 f claim for the summer is off the mark I believe....the text at the bottom is courtesy of Wikipedia where it states that 2 - 3 days/year it goes below 0 f.

For me, the sprawl of the greater St Louis area was mind numbing....my relatives lived in O'Fallon/Dardenne Prairie area and there are no buses in the community....all of the kids seem to have cars..

Hope you enjoy the area.

The average annual temperature for the years 1970–2000, recorded at nearby Lambert-Saint Louis International Airport, is 56.3 °F (13.5 °C), and average precipitation is 38.9 inches (990 mm). The normal high temperature in July is 90 °F (32 °C), and the normal low temperature in January is 21 °F (−6 °C), although this varies from year to year. Both 100 °F (37.8 °C) and 0 °F (−17.8 °C) temperatures can be seen on an average 2 or 3 days per year. The official record low is −22 °F (−30 °C) on January 5, 1884, and the record high is 115 °F (46 °C) on July 14, 1954.[22]
Winter (December through February) is the driest season, with an average 7.3 inches (185 mm) of precipitation. The average seasonal snowfall of 22.2 inches (56 cm). Spring (March through May), is typically the wettest season, with 11.4 inches (290 mm) of precipitation. Dry spells lasting one to two weeks are common during the growing seasons.
St. Louis experiences thunderstorms 48 days a year on average.[23] Especially in the spring, these storms can often be severe, with high winds, large hail and tornadoes. St. Louis has been affected on more than one occasion by particularly damaging tornadoes.