13 Habits Florida Transplants Bring From Up North That Drive Locals Absolutely Crazy

Florida is one of the fastest-growing states in the country, and that growth has a face.

It looks like a moving truck from New Jersey.

It looks like a U-Haul from New York.

It looks like someone who just arrived and already has opinions about how Florida should be doing things.

Many Florida natives aren’t against Northerners. But there are some things transplants do that drive Floridians absolutely crazy.

1. Complaining About the Heat

Florida’s heat isn’t a secret.

It’s one of the most documented features of the state. It’s in every travel guide, every relocation article, and every conversation anyone has ever had about moving to Florida.

Yet transplants who move to Florida anyway and then spend June through September narrating how hot it is to Floridians who’ve lived with it their entire lives test a particular kind of patience.

Florida natives didn’t design the climate. They just deal with it.

The suggestion that the heat is surprising or unreasonable from someone who voluntarily relocated to the Sunshine State is a conversational experience that Floridians navigate with both grace and bewilderment.

2. Driving Like the Speed Limit Is a Suggestion

Northern driving culture produces two types of Florida transplants: The ones who drove aggressively up north and continue to do so in Florida, and the ones who find Florida highway speeds alarming so they compensate by going considerably slower than everyone around them.

Floridians find both varieties equally challenging from behind the wheel, just for different reasons.

The aggressive driver creates urgency.

The cautious driver creates a procession.

Neither variety has fully calibrated to the specific rhythm of Florida highway driving, which has its own logic that takes experience to grasp.

3. Insisting Their Old State’s Pizza Is Better

This comes up with a frequency that Florida locals find predictable and exhausting.

Transplants from New York, New Jersey, and certain parts of New England carry a pizza identity with them that they deploy regularly and without prompting.

The pizza back home was better.

The water is different.

You can’t get a real slice anywhere in Florida.

Floridians who enjoy perfectly good pizza in their home state listen to this and nod because it’s easier than the alternative.

Some conversations don’t have a productive destination, and the great pizza debate is one of them.

4. Treating Air Conditioning Like an Environmental Crime

Transplants from northern states, where central air conditioning is less standard, sometimes arrive in Florida with opinions about air conditioning that Florida locals find difficult to understand.

The AC is too cold.

Why is it set so low?

We should open the windows and let the natural air in.

Floridians who open their windows in July let in air that’s approximately the same temperature as a bread oven with added humidity.

The air conditioning is set where it is for reasons that become clear after one’s first Florida summer.

Transplants who’ve survived one rarely repeat the open windows suggestion with the same conviction.

5. Jaywalking With Northern Confidence

Certain northern cities have a pedestrian culture where jaywalking is standard practice, unremarkable, and essentially built into how people navigate urban space.

Transplants who bring this habit to Florida streets encounter a driving culture that isn’t always watching for pedestrians operating outside the crosswalk.

Floridians who witness northern transplants stepping confidently into traffic watch this with the wide eyes of people who understand the risk in a way the transplant clearly doesn’t yet.

The adjustment usually happens fast; Florida traffic is a thorough teacher.

6. Refusing to Acknowledge That Wawa Is Actually Great

Transplants from states without Wawa locations sometimes arrive in Florida with the specific resistance of someone who already has a convenience store loyalty and doesn’t need a new one.

They’ve heard the Florida Wawa enthusiasm. They find it excessive. They went once, and it was fine.

What’s the big deal?

Florida Wawa regulars hear this and understand that the person hasn’t ordered the right thing yet or hasn’t been there at the right time on the right day.

The resistance usually breaks down within the first year.

The converts become the enthusiasts, and the Wawa-transplant cycle continues.

7. Leaving the House Without Sunscreen in Summer

Transplants from northern states where the sun is a seasonal visitor rather than a year-round presence underestimate the Florida summer sun in a way that produces consequences you can see from across the beach.

They go out for a couple of hours.

They don’t think about sunscreen.

They come back the color of something that’s been left on a grill too long.

Floridians who’ve watched this happen approximately a thousand times have stopped offering unsolicited sunscreen advice because the lesson seems to land better when it’s learned firsthand.

8. Comparing Everything to Back Home Out Loud

Florida locals understand that transplants miss things from wherever they came from.

That’s human, and it’s reasonable.

What wears on Florida natives is the running comparison commentary, the ongoing narration in which every Florida experience gets held up against its northern equivalent and found different and lacking.

Different doesn’t mean worse.

Florida locals know this because they’ve never left.

Transplants take varying amounts of time to arrive at the same conclusion.

9. Not Preparing for Hurricane Season Until It’s Too Late

Transplants who move to Florida and experience their first hurricane season sometimes treat the early warnings, the evacuation prep advice, and the general June-through-November readiness culture as excessive caution from people who’ve been living near water too long.

Then a named storm enters the Gulf with genuine intention, and the transplant is in line at Home Depot behind forty Floridians who’ve been there before.

The shutters, the water supply, the generator situation.

All of it becomes very real very quickly.

Transplants who’ve gotten through one serious hurricane prep practically become true Floridians overnight.

10. Expecting Fall to Happen

Transplants from states where October means sweaters and changing leaves and the smell of something baking arrive in Florida in October and encounter a situation that’s 85 degrees with full humidity and no visible foliage change.

They wait for fall. Fall doesn’t come, especially if they live in Central or South Florida.

Floridians who’ve made peace with the two-season system—hot and slightly less hot—watch transplants cycle through the stages of fall grief every year with the patient understanding of people who went through the same thing when they first arrived.

Pumpkin spice lattes are available in Florida just like everywhere else.

But the October temperature to go with them is a different conversation.

11. Moving to Florida and Immediately Missing the Snow

Some transplants who moved to Florida specifically to escape winter become nostalgic for snow in December.

They then say so in the presence of Floridians, who’ve lived their entire lives without snow, and locals aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do with that information.

Snow is beautiful from a distance.

Florida locals will grant this.

But it’s less beautiful when you’re shoveling it at 6 a.m. before work in February, which is a perspective that Florida locals have never had to develop and that transplants seem to forget they had.

12. Underestimating the Bug Situation

Transplants from northern states move to Florida with a general awareness that bugs exist.

But they don’t have a full appreciation for what Florida bugs are capable of.

The mosquitoes. The palmetto bugs, which are large cockroaches that the state of Florida has collectively agreed to call something else.

The love bugs that arrive in swarms twice a year and cover every surface, including car windshields.

Floridians navigate all of this as standard conditions of life in the South.

Transplants spend their first summer in a state of escalating renegotiation with the natural world that locals watch with amusement.

13. Taking the Wildlife Casually Until They Shouldn’t

Florida has alligators. This is well known.

What’s less understood by transplants is the behavioral knowledge that Floridians carry about when and where alligators are likely to be and how to respond when they encounter one.

Transplants who see an alligator for the first time sometimes treat it as a photo opportunity in a way that Florida locals find alarming.

Floridians who’ve grown up with alligators in retention ponds, golf course water hazards, and occasionally wandering through neighborhoods have a calibrated respect for the animal that’s neither panicked nor casual.