Two Things I Like About the Weather in North Central Florida

One is the predictability.

I grew up in a tornado-prone area, where you got (at most) a few minutes' notice that something terrible was inbound.

While I hear about a tornado in Florida now and then, they're not the norm. The norm is that you hear a hurricane may be forming in the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico, then a few days later you hear that it has formed and may make landfall in Florida, then a few days after that it arrives and you already have some general idea of what part of the state it will likely come through. Plenty of time to put away anything in your yard that the wind might carry away, stock up on flashlight batteries and bottled water and so forth, or even just plan a family trip out of the area. The storms can certainly be ugly, but they're not surprises.

The other is that the temperature extremes are narrower and shorter.

In Missouri, it gets both colder and hotter than in north central Florida ... and stays that way. You might see periods of several days where the thermometer doesn't reach five above zero or doesn't fall below 90.

In north central Florida, it falls below 20 degrees maybe one or two days every couple of years, and seldom tops 100. And when it does either of those things, it does so for a few hours before warming or cooling by several tens of degrees. For example, tonight it may get down to 19 or 20 degrees, but tomorrow it will be in the 40s. Over the last week, we've had daily lows in the high 20s or low 30s, and daily highs in the 60s and 70s. This summer, even if it hits 97 during the day, it will fall into the 70s at night.

I only see one down side to that, and that's that you have to think more about clothing choices. It might be 30 degrees out when you leave the house (bundle up a little!), and 70 degrees before you're ready to return home (so make sure there's a t-shirt layer you can strip down to if you don't want to get uncomfortably warm).