Some retirees are rethinking Florida after Irma

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14. Things have changed

We've been down here for 29 years now, and have spouse and I have both recently retired. We have both put down strong roots in this state, have contributed well in our working years, and have degrees from Florida universities, Go Gators.
We're among those seriously thinking about leaving Florida now.
Things have changed a great deal since we arrived here to live in the late 80's.
Politically, the state has turned into a republican hell hole - helped mightily by scores of retired civil servants from the NE who fled Long Island and other places after fleeing from Brooklyn and any other place that they saw a person of color in. These fools joined the ignorants already here in turning the state red, perhaps indelibly. There's still a good number of locals and others that remember and miss the days when the Governor and a good part of the Tallahassee House was Dem, but we're in the minority now I fear.
Weather-wise, things have also changed for the worse. We see it everyday, all year long. The vaunted state crop - citrus - has been virtually decimated by disease, storms, and over-development. Lake Okeechobee has become a giant cesspool thanks to the mismanagement of Florida's natural waterways. They spill out the toxic contents to the east and west these days, thereby polluting the Caloosahatchee River to the west and the once pristine St. Lucie estuary to the east. A fix will take decades and besides, we can't disrupt the sugar industry who now owns the lands blocking the flow to the Everglades, once the natural filter. To the north of the great Lake, toxic runoff from over-development in the Orlando watershed flows into the Lake. It's a small world after all.
Meanwhile, offshore in the Gulf and Atlantic Ocean, the water regularly goes to 90F in the summers now providing rocket fuel to the bowling balls coming off the African coast. After a lull for the last decade, the storms are back and only increasing in intensity and regularity.
Our homes, for the most part, are built for storms. But retirees, like myself, have a time with boarding up, shuttering up, and moving everything off the open areas of our homes, and then waiting the storm out in a state of ultra high anxiety. The aftermath can be just as trying with power outages, food and fuel shortages, and generally a big mess to clean up - not to mention the $20K deductable for "wind damage" that many of us carry on the non-insurance policies.
The winters are still blissful, with low humidity (relatively), and comfortable temps. We even break out a jacket now and again.
But the time has come to assess whether the winters are worth all of the summertime blues. It's not the heat - I'm used to that, even play golf in it (the rates are much lower in the summer . It's everything else. Things have changed.
We're looking into other pastures and I suspect our Florida adventure will soon come to an end.