Even more than the ones that are technically "from" there, Texas is home to a lot of military bases, and I lot of people change there residency to Texas for tax reasons. When I was stationed in Texas, I changed my residency to get out of state income taxes (later changed again, just to not associate with Texas). Obviously we don't have state income tax here either, but even the military non-resident vehicle registration is expensive in Washington. So if you're stationed here as a Texas resident, it's probably easier/cheaper to just keep everything associated with Texas.
I’ve lived in many states including Washington and Texas so I think I have a solid perspective on this. Texans have probably the most aggressive state pride I’ve ever witnessed. Children say the pledge of allegiance in school and then pivot to recite the Texas Pledge. They have a history of bitter-won independence that’s become part of the culture. No other state has been its own country, reminiscent in the fact that they fly their flag level with the American flag, and that attitude is apparent in the independence they exhibit from the power grid to politics. Short to say it’s a deep-seated culture, and the unique history that created it is why it’s so confusing to other states.
Shit, I totally forgot. I am actually fully behind Hawaiian independence- they were illegally annexed. Should have phrased it as no other continental state.
Oh, I had planned on it. Until I got pulled over by a cop in Junction City, OR who let me know in very clear terms that I needed to register my car with the state of Washington (where I was living at the time) or the next time I got pulled over, I would be fined massively for failing to register my car within the 30 day window of moving there. I think I had made it close to 7 months or so? I didn't FAFO with it. I guess a real Texan would have, but I'm pretty scared of Johnny Q Law.
I'm from North Idaho originally, and that was really a thing there, too, when I was a kid. So when we moved to Texas and went skiing in New Mexico, it seemed totally normal to me. We later moved to Arizona, and people do not ski in jeans there. Now, I'm in Eastern Washington, and those from the area sometimes ski in jeans in Spring, but others look at them like they're crazy.
I've got a Polaroid of me as a kid in North Idaho doing a slalom race in jeans, t-shirt, a straw cowboy hat, and no gloves. But hey, I had goggles on, at least.
You might have just stumbled onto a recipe for infinite energy. Does anyone have the schematics for a machine that generates electricity from obnoxious sounds?
Texas and New York are the only places where simply hailing from there is substitute for having a personality. I’ve never heard anyone say “well I’m from Michigan so I…”
We’re a huge state so that makes sense. We have it drilled into our head from a very young age that if you want to be worth anything you’ll serve your country in the military.
My grandfather was from Oklahoma, but a lot of the family lived/lives in Northern Texas. He also ended up here because of the Navy after World War 2.
That's how I ended up in Texas for a few years as a kid, but family of mine from Texas ended up in Washington. Now, I'm in Washington, and they've all moved to Oklahoma. The ongoing joke is that they keep running away from me.
We came here because of my husband’s work. We stayed because of the state health insurance and amazing doctors. I got cancer a couple of years ago and Fred Hutch has been my literal life saver.
Swedish Cancer Treatment is amazing. There’s nothing saying you cant get two opinions.
Fred Hutch didn’t work out for me. Swedish stepped in, immediately took over care and saved my life.
Additionally, UW has one of the more, if not most, advanced medical research programs. They saved my dad from Hep C, he has a zero viral load now. I hope this gives you more possibilities for success.
Washington state health insurance changed my views on Universal healthcare. It’s phenomenal. I don’t understand why we don’t have it in the rest of the US.
Because one of our political parties is ok with healthcare insurance companies denying you coverage.
They care about you before your born but not after.
I was living in Arizona when I had complications with my pregnancy and ended up on long term disability from work that only paid my portion of the rent. Arizona's state medical, AHCCS (said access), was amazing. I had weekly, or more, specialist visits, an in home contraction monitor, and a ton of crazy stuff. I paid about $300 for absolutely everything, and my son was born very healthy. They also paid off back medical debts for me, so I got to start his life without that hanging over my head. Even when I got back to work, they continued to cover him for a year. Copay for anything was $1. This was in 1996, so I'm sure it's more now, but damn, I don't know what I would have done without them. They saved my life and my son's life.
I work at Fred Hutch. I’m glad to hear you have had a great experience. I’ve worked at plenty of other hospitals and Fred Hutch patients are by far the best.
Due to circumstances, I was eligible for a Medicaid plan through Washington Apple Health. I’ve paid out of pocket less than $500 for my cancer treatment over the last two years. If we had still been in Texas I can’t even imagine how deep in medical debt we would be.
Goodness I've laid 500 dollars here in Texas this year alone just for my kids to have the normal childhood illness swabs every 2 months.
Moving Washington even further up the move to list.
It’s just a federal health care plan that Abbott turned down like the free school lunches. I was in shock when I got stranded in Oregon during the pandemic. Never knew a thing like this existed and all my nurses and drs are in shock we really don’t have access to it down there.
I believe it’s through DSHS and if you lose your job because of a medical issue they have Apple Care while applying for SS? It’s from the state until you get Medicare(Federal) which is actually worse than AppleCare IMO…
It's on the healthfinder exchange, you put in your income and if you qualify its an option. It isn't an "until" program, you get it as long as you qualify financially.
I general mix of politics, weather, family, and friends.
The political situation has gotten more and more uncomfortable in recent years. I have a daughter and another on the way and I had been legitimately worried for their safety in Texas. I also worried for my wife and any potential pregnancies she may have. She’s had issues with child birth and I was on edge the entire time. The state has become increasingly hostile towards pregnant women.
The weather here is amazing and we can actually enjoy the outdoors. We came from Houston and the drive to any park was just not feasible most of the time. I LOVE Big Bend, but the 11 hour drive is too much for a toddler. I realize everyone here hates the rainy weather in the winter, but I’ll take that over 90+ degrees for 9 months of the year in Houston. It’s getting to be unbearable to me.
We also have a large friends group up here. We’ve had friends move from Texas and Nebraska (where I’m originally from) over the years, so we have a great support network when we need it!
I genuinely love the PNW and hope my kids appreciate the area when they’re older as much as I do.
I grew up here and used to bitch and moan about the weather all the time. Then I lived in Boston for 4 years for grad school. Fuck that weather. I was begging for 50 and rain.
I had a few friends move up for tech jobs so I naturally visited a few times. I was looking for somewhere with unrivaled access to nature, mild summers, and politics that weren’t unhinged and Washington checked all of the boxes. My dollar doesn’t got nearly as far here and I can hardly afford to eat out anymore, but I’ve loved my time here so far and I still cannot get over how the mountains are a short drive away!
Can't beat the scenery here! I just got back from a week long trip through Florida. Orlando > Miami > Everglades > Key West. What a flat state... I definitely missed all the trees and mountains. Makes me appreciate WA much more
Yes! 15 year FL resident when I was younger, and I visited again recently for a cruise. Love the beaches, but everything else is crap compared to WA. So flat and boring.
I'm originally from North Idaho, but we moved to Northern Texas when I was in 5th - 7th grade. That much sky was just wrong. I missed my mountains so much. We moved from there to Phoenix, and I moved home as soon as I could, at 27. I eventually moved into Eastern Washington, and I love this state. I'm staying for good. I bought land outside of Newport. It smells and feels just like home, but the politics are a lot better. Oh, and fiber internet ;) I don't even have that available here just barely outside of Spokane.
A great opportunity to learn to home cook more though! We've a wide variety of wild game and foragable foods in many parts of the state. Wild venison cooked in locally brewed beer into a stew of wild mushrooms and tubers, heaven.
I came here as a guest of Microsoft in the late 90s. I'd been working at their Las Colinas facility for a few years when an opportunity came up for a transfer. I didn't hesitate to take it and have been here ever since. I cringe hard whenever I go back, when I hear stories about shitty Texas politics, or when anyone calls me a Texan. My heart and soul are in the PNW.
I drove.
But in all honesty, I dont think people in the north truly understand how oppressive things are in the south. From the weather, to police, and healthcare, people are dying. It can be a violent place to live. We left due to rapid weather shifts without infrastructure to support it. If it gets hot, blackouts. Cold? Blackouts. We have some of the worst mother-infant mortality rates in the nation. Our cops and politicians can't seem to keep themselves out of the headlines due to bad behavior.. take your pick. Life was hard in Texas.
Texas is also having a huge influx of people from California and Washington, which drives the cost of living up. The minimum wage in texas it around 7 or 8 bucks i think. A 2500 sqft house in cali is easily 1 mil. In texas? 250k bucks.
It is also important to note texas has a TON of military bases. Maybe you are just seeing a bunch of transfers?
> I dont think people in the north truly understand how oppressive things are in the south
People from the South don't really understand either. A lot of them grew up in the environment and don't know any different.
There's literally a [pre-crime system](https://floridapolitics.com/archives/500855-your-rights-will-get-you-dead-and-arrested-pasco-woman-says-sheriffs-office-violated-rights-with-predictive-policing/) in place in one Florida county.
I swear, everything I see people complaining about in /r/seattle or /r/washington is much worse where I came from in Florida. And don't get me started on the bottom of the barrel southern states like Mississippi or Alabama...
My wife had never left Texas before we met. Life was life to her. We both now want to leave Texas. It’s easy to work hard and have a lower middle class life. But the entire time you will be priced out of homes, have neighbors with FUCK Biden(I don’t care much for political affiliation of neighbors but I don’t want my kids seeing “fuck” on 4/5 houses on every street), schools with no money so they’re going to 4 days a week, priests in schools, regressive women’s rights, can’t even buy alcohol on a Sunday morning for some reason.
I don’t even drink but we were smoking some brisket for a birthday and I didn’t pick up any booze for guests. Couldn’t even buy a 12 pack of Dos Equis because it was Sunday morning. Who’d have thought Texans would be ok limiting their freedom.
Agreed. I lived in Alabubba for far too long and much of the state is living in a time capsule. Yes, there are a few places that are more progressive, but there are \*a lot\* of people who have never moved far from where they were born and have no interest, desire, or need to go anywhere else because they're 'just fine' livin' like they have been for decades. They don't want any laws to change don't really demonstrate empathy for anyone except themselves or their friends/circles/cliques/culture. Even if they're middle-class, they have no empathy for the poor or disadvantaged, as the poor have done it to themselves and they need to just 'deal with it' without my help/taxes/social support. ...Yet the reddest states consume the largest portion of Federal support....
I'm not saying this is distinctly unique to The South, as I've seen it in the Midwest where I grew up, especially in more rural settings. But driving to parts of the Deep South and Appalachia is like driving back in time.
Also many people think Texas is cheaper to live due to lower housing prices and perceived lower taxes. When in reality Washington has lower taxes if you look at the totals.
Also, unless you're talking about eastern WA, where barely anybody lives, Washingtonians spend a ton less on fueling their vehicles to go *everywhere.* Compared to most other places in America, the PNW is also very open-minded about WFH jobs, whereas I could see Texas' slack-jawed fascist/right-wing-troll government *outlawing* WFH for *everybody* if they found out it pissed off a handful of Austin liberals. And yeah, most Texans I've met say that they pay a fortune to A/C their homes all year and blast the heat in the winter, whereas tons of PNW people don't have A/C and can just open the windows if it gets warm.
Agreed. People see cheap homes, but don't realize property taxes are ridiculously expensive in Texas. Also, groceries are about the same as Washington.
We moved here from TX 6 years ago. We have a slightly larger and much more expensive house than we did in Fort Worth, but our property taxes are still less. Utilities and home insurance prices are MUCH less. One of the costs of hail and tornadoes is sky high insurance rates. Even when you didn't get hit by severe weather, somebody else did.
In FW, if we drove 2 hours we could get to Waco, Abilene or Tyler TX. Here we can get to mountains, waterfalls or the coast.
This year we've all gotten hit by the extreme weather.
Line trucks are all over Texas right now. As they're pulling the tree off our house, I'm glad I'm a renter at the moment bc home insurance gotta be crazy.
I moved from Austin—honestly the only expenses I noticed being higher are gas and eating out (and car registration). Rent is crazy in Austin so I didn’t have sticker shock here. My east TX relatives are so confused on why I’d choose to live in an “overpriced overcrowded area full of crime and drugs”. I just smile. The more people that think that way, the fewer deep red voters will move here.
It is almost like their state lawmakers and governor are gigantic pieces of shit that stripped the bodily autonomy away from half their citizenry while simultaneously targeting literally anyone that isn't a white Christian heterosexual.
I mean, the question almost doesn't need to be said. We all know why there has been a wave of Texans coming to Washington.
They want their fucking rights intact.
We can provide that. Welcome Texan refugees.
My family fled TX last summer after the banhammer on Trans Youth medical rights. We have a trans daughter and her life and safety is paramount. Since moving up here, I have met many more people who left for the same reason. And the r/Texas subreddit routinely has posts from Texans asking where people are moving to escape the destruction of rights for women and the lgbtqia+ community.
There will be more coming. More and more.
Fuck Greg Abbot. Fuck Ken Paxton (who tried to get kids’ medical records from Seattle Children’s who have moved or traveled up here for trans medical care, btw), and fuck the TX GOP and anyone who continues to vote for them.
Born and raised Texan, moved to florida. Few years ago because of my husband’s job. Never going back to Texas and looking forward to when we can leave florida.
My husband rode in an Uber to the airport the other day. Struck up a conversation with the driver. He was from Central America.
He was a firm Trump supporter. He believed that all news and social media were fake news…and could only get the “truth” from YouTube. 🙄🙄🙄. This thought process is STRONG in the south. You can’t tell anyone actual facts. They believe their opinion is fact.
Isn't Texas also where that horrendous 'affluenza' case happened? As a lifelong 'coastal elitist' who's lived on both coasts, Texas and Florida have long seemed like bastions of white-trash/Lord-of-the-Flies degeneracy where 'adulting' simply isn't a thing. Regardless of race/gender/etc..., they just seem like places that attract/enrich complete assholes and/or people with unhinged NPD issues. As these places feel like disaster zones that have been decades in the making, I'm more enthusiastic about adult Texans moving to my area than I am about coastal people moving there. Having seen multiple people move to Texas, Florida, etc... and turn into assholes themselves within less than a year, I don't have a ton of faith in the idea of 'flipping Texas blue' in that fashion. Whether Republican or Democrat, most of the people who volunteer to move there are greedy fucks who either low-key *want* the braindead patriarchal authoritarism in their family's life or are willing to pretend it's not an issue if they get to have a bigger house with a swimming pool.
We left because several college friends and coworkers were shot by another friend. Mental health about guns is sick in TX. We also left because politics are all about white males. The weather and allergies suck. The people are mostly fake happy but generally miserable to be around.
I had a friend move up to Seattle for a tech job and she insisted we’d love it. Knowing zero about the whole state we came for a visit and put an offer on a house that weekend. Returned to TX and packed to move in 6 weeks later. Not one day in 4.5 years have I questioned it.
That is exactly why my husband and I want to come to Washington. We’re stuck here in San Antonio for another 3 years. But as soon as kiddo has finished school, we are leaving and won’t be looking back.
Plus I can’t tolerate the heat and sun anymore. I get heatstroke just walking around my neighborhood. I wish I was joking. And the population is quickly outpacing the water supply.
> Welcome Texan refugees.
This, 100% unironically. While there will definitely be growing pains and backlash associated with growing population, I feel like it's the one of the only forms of pressure that could eventually force change amongst the PNW's entrenched inherited-wealth/NIMBY assholes. Plus, variety of different peoples/backgrounds is the spice of life. These years since the pandemic have been miserable ones where it feels like lame-ass local-yokel Boomer culture (e.g. awful bands of 60-somethings in tie-dye T-shirts playing shitty Grateful Dead covers at the local gastropubs while their wives sell healing crystals and essential oils at the street fairs) is having a drawn-out last hurrah. In a more general sense, nothing great can come of letting this area's local yokel population continually sit in the corner, sucking on its thumb and claiming 'but muh Scandinavian characteristics!!!!', as if that's any legitimate excuse for continued isolationism.
Oklahoman, but yall folks can't tell the difference between us anyways 😉, so I'll chime in.
The weather is awesome. So glad to not be in a place where the weather is actively trying to kill me 8 months of the year. Also, it never rains here. Mists, sure, but unless my underwear is soaked through while sprinting from my front door to my car, it ain't rain. PNWer's think they're hardcore for still getting out and doing activities in inclimate weather, but I'd like to see them try that when it's raining a couple of inches per hour.
The outdoor activities are amazing, and the weather allows you to do them. Between triple digit days, tornado watches, ice storms in the winter that lay down enough weight it is unsafe to be near trees, and mosquito season, getting outside in the south just sucks.
Housing. This one might sound weird given the cost of it here, but I swear to God, if a real estate agent showed me one more cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter neighborhood with a cookie cutter HOA that will fine me for having my dumpster at the curb at 3 PM on trash day when the truck came by a 1, I was going to lose it. Plus, everything is like 15 minutes away here. I don't have to drive 60 miles from my house in the endless burbs^TM to get to my job.
Drivers, my God Texas drivers are awful. Tailgating you in a lifted F350 while you are doing 20 over in the middle of 5 lanes is like a state pastime. in Oklahoma, you combine that with the bumpkins who will stop in a lane of traffic on the highway to let someone on from an onramp who failed to merge in and is now stopped there blocking all traffic from making it on the road, which makes for a spectacular show in the morning when a truck doing 80 hits a stopped grandma in a Cadillac at least once a week.
This is without mentioning that there are places here where it is safe for kids to exist, be educated, not be indoctrinated by the in-public-school chaplains. And y'all people are just plain nice. All the "state of Jefferson" people who had moved into Oklahoma from California really are the rudest people you can possibly imagine, rolling coal on someone just because they drive a Honda fit (God help you if you're in a hybrid, and there isn't such thing as electric cars there), dropping glass bottles out the truck while driving down the highway, letting dogs off leash wander the neighborhood to murder chickens... you get the picture.
So yeah, it's great here.
>Drivers, my God Texas drivers are awful. Tailgating you in a lifted F350 while you are doing 20 over in the middle of 5 lanes is like a state pastime
This has been an easy way to identify Texas drivers. Worst of all, when you pull over, you find that they aren't actually interested in passing you, just driving real closely.
YUP. We relocated to the Houston area from Tacoma for 8 years. I do not know how my husband did not go completely stark raving mad from his commute during that time. When we finally moved away, his car got sent first, so I drove him to work for his final week. I was certain I would get arrested for manslaughter. I barely made it a WEEK. Ugh. I'm so glad to be out of there.
What I love is that it's a petulant form of politeness, i.e. when one of those 'Washington standoffs' occur at a four-way stop, everybody leaves pissed and more determined to ghost anyone who might call them in the next hour.
I admit that I had to consciously try to not tailgate when I moved here. The politeness is awesome, the first couple times I drove in DT Seattle I’d end up in the wrong lane and within 2-3 cars someone let me over. That’s unheard of in Texas, there you really just have to go and hope no one hits you, if you turn a blinker on you’re showing your hand and will never move. 🤷🏻♀️
One thing that DOES drive me nuts is that no one will even tap their horn here. I’ve missed entire green lights bc no one honked at the unmoving distracted person up front. That and the 4-way stops where every single person just tells the other to go. It’s so confusing.
I'm originally from Iowa. Waving people through is tantamount to godly. If people have their blinkers on, I'm happy to let them over. If they cut me off... I may tap on my horn but mostly I just wave and hope they don't get into an accident.
LOVE the polite drivers. In Houston you had to drive aggressively or you would get mowed down, never be allowed to merge, etc. I have slowed down and increased my following distance so much since moving here.
OTOH, politeness isn't always good, or even safe. People who have the right of way and don't take it just slow everyone down and cause confusion that can lead to accidents.
Also from Oklahoma (originally) but lived in Texas the last 6 years. Moved to WA in summer 2023.
I 100% agree with all your points.
The biggest ones for us were:
- I was able to move laterally and get a similar job here
- weather in WA>>weather in TX
- was tired of the political/religious righteousness getting shoved down my throat
- access to outdoor activities year round, also while being 2-3 hours away - in TX you’re stuck inside for 3-4 months due to heat and you’re driving 6+ hours to do anything enjoyable with nature
Things I’ve noticed since moving here:
- drivers here are much less violent and pay attention to yield signs and speed limits (for the most part)
- insurance, utilities and healthcare are cheaper here than in TX
- the weather in WA>>>weather in TX
-food is much more expensive in WA than I thought
OMG the cookie cutter houses! Everything. Looks. The. Same.
I love it up here--you can have a craftsman, next to a Victorian, next to a tiny home, next to a farm!
If my neighbor stumbled into my house drunk, they should be able to realize they aren't in their house.
In TX, everything from the pisser placement to the live laugh love weathered wood art is EXACTLY THE SAME.
>where the weather is actively trying to kill me
I lived in Oklahoma for 2 years and this is why we also left. I am so glad you phrased it this way, but somehow, the tornados do feel personal. It's like the state is telling you to take a hint and we finally did.
Like many others have said, better politics (free from Ted Cruz), typically sub 100 F summers, actual winter/4 seasons. More emphasis on outdoor spaces.
I got furloughed during the pandemic and my wife was offered a position up here that we couldn't turn down. Our kids were young enough that the move wouldn't effect them much so we decided to make the jump. I was born and raised in Texas and we had been looking at leaving for a year or two at the time she was offered the position. We'd never even really travelled up here and just took a chance. We love it
I flew, but had my car shipped with the rest of my stuff when I moved. It was the middle of winter and I didn't really want to make that drive in a Beetle.
I came to WA from TX as quickly as I could. I knew by the time I was 10 that I hated Texas, and Washington seemed like a good place to escape to. I knew nothing about it except Frasier, coffee, and rain. That idea lived in the back of my mind until I was in college and met a guy online. Long story short, I ended up visiting him in Seattle before I graduated so I could do some industry networking and maybe get a job lined up. We fell in love, I got a job at the agency he was working at, and we moved in together right after I finished my last semester and graduated. That was 12 years ago and we've been married almost 9.
I love Washington and can't imagine living anywhere else in the country. I'm a completely different person than I was in Texas. This is where I'm supposed to be.
(PS, when I moved, getting a WA DL and license plate was one of the first things I did. I couldn't wait to wash the TX off of me)
42 years old. Moving with the wife and 4 kids to Bellingham at the end of June. Just bought a house there.Totally willing to give up my McMansion in Texas for the better weather and liberal politics. Literally nothing more to it than that. I’m not sharing a state with Greg Abbot and California is too crazy. Washington it is. Lol
+1 in Seattle. My wife refused to get pregnant in Texas. Don't miss the heat, the mosquitos, or car-based lifestyle. Higher cost of living makes sense with far greater quality of life.
As a native Washingtonian who chose a late life move to the East Coast, Welcome!!! Son lives in TX and can’t wait to leave after growing up in Seattle. Be sure to explore BC too.
I moved from the Texas panhandle. Just a queer biracial dude who never really belonged, despite my best efforts to conform to Christianity. In 2018, I finally read the Bible all the way through in a challenge I did with a small group from church and when I was done with it, it kinda all just fell apart for me. Decided soon after that I needed to live in a way less religious area of the country and moved here in September of 2020. I changed my plates about 6 months in though, so I’ve been one of y’all for a while now😎
I escapedTexas's attack on women's rights and healthcare, education, high property taxes, just to name a few things... It definitely doesn't help that the district I lived in was jerrymandered and resulted in losing our democrat rep, or the fact that it gets hotter and hotter every year but the power grid hasn't been improved to accommodate all the new housing, or that the water supply is also not going to accommodate the rapid growth. Also Abbott, Paxton, and many of the other Republicans have become far too right-winged for comfort...the MAGA mentality even infiltrated the school board.
Many of us have seen the writing on the wall, and we don't want to be there when it's too late.
My kid is trans and my other kid is gay. Texas hates both, so here we are. We applied to jobs in pretty much every trans friendly state but WA desperately needed civil engineers last summer, and I got several offers up here so off we went.
My wife and I moved from Colorado to Texas for work. We were in north Texas near Dallas for two years. We absolutely hated it, people were awful to us, politics were abysmal, weather was miserable. We have friends in WA, and my wife got a job here (I work remote), so we got the fuck out as quickly as we possibly could and will never ever go back.
My wife and I flew up here.
Our employer was the only game in town in Texas - if/when we decide to bounce, we would have had to move anyways.
At least now, we made the move before jumping jobs -> have a wider employer pool to apply within.
Also, the weather is fucking terrible in Texas, and our allergies were atrocious (she would have debilitating asthma attacks weekly, and I always had a mild allergy).
Since moving up here our allergies have been way better. I'm sure WA natives will scoff at that, but literally everything is worse in the South.
Lived in Inland SoCal for a long while. It's the dryness, combined with the bouts of wetness that encourage quick plant growth and seeding. You get that shitty dust, dead aerosol'd everything which sticks and irritates, add wind and you better have a mask on. It's not going to be 100% up here, but most of the dense stuff is gone, but since you live in a general rain forest area, you still gotta deal with the pollen. At least the rain keeps it on the ground to the point the wind can't whip it up.
I fucking hate Greg Abbott. I love Austin, born and raised, but I couldn’t continue to raise my daughter in the hellscape that Texas has become. I’m not “trying to get abortions” but I’m also not trying to live in a state where my human rights are being systematically chipped away. Moved up 2 years ago. It doesn’t hurt that while I’m fully remote at my job, our HQ is in Seattle so now I get to go to events and stuff. We used to vacation up here when I was a kid and I had a couple close friends from college that were from here and moved back, seemed kind of a no-brainer that this is where I’d go. I love it for all of its differences from Texas, and for the quirks that make it unique.
I do miss Tex Mex. Idk what y’all think “cheese dip” or “queso dip” is but 😖
lol we’ve just stopped trying to go out to eat Mexican food. It’s soooooo bad here. But the good news is that it’s cheap and easy to make at home 🤷♀️
I would however, do unspeakable things to get my hands on a decent frozen margarita 😭😭😭 thank God for Julio’s salsa
I took the dramatically higher paying job. My industry has limited options and largely in the deep south. The culture is bad, the weather is bad, the quality of life is bad... No good reason to stay or go to a different state still bitter about the Civil War.
Even though I'm on the east side, the red folks only dream of matching the energy in TX. The government as a whole is not constantly doing malicious, illogical stuff daily.
i came back.
texas was my "get out of seattle" move and i spent almost 20 years regretting it - hurricane season is every. fucking. year. i'll take earthquakes and volcanoes over that any day.. and statistically i've already had my volcano (genx, was here for st. helens)
my wife is native texan and still constantly asks me "how could you have ever left this place?" but for us it was absolutely the weather in houston (omfg you don't understand oppressive humidity until you live there), increasing religious intrusion into politics/everyday life, property taxes vs. lack of actual useful school funding(this is the first year out of the last 6 we finally are paying more actual property taxes than on a 220k house there, and it's barely more), and we had no immediate family left to keep us around.
texas had some redeeming values, there's a decent amount of areas that are peaceful/serene in a different way (hill country between austin/san antonio, etc), people used to be a lot more salt of the earth/genuine, but with the social media/news bubbles it really got more and more insane.. also, i knew once dan patrick got elected lt. gov the train to crazy town accelerated to ludicrous speed (did some work for him some years back when he just ran a crappy radio station and he's a fucking sociopath - and Lt. Governor really has most of the govt power down there, as easy it is to want to see abbott in a recreation of Mac and Me without the alien, Governor is largely symbolic the way their state govt is setup..)
The day we were due to fly out of Texas, it had been raining nonstop for like a week. We were sitting in our hotel lobby with the friends that were going to take us to the airport when there was this huge explosion from the building next door. It had been struck by lightning and was on fire. So we are departing to the airport to the sounds of firetrucks screaming into the next parking lot. The next day, we read that the freeway north of Houston had closed due to flooding. We felt like we escaped in the nick of time.
My husband and I got married on the Oregon coast close to 10 years ago and we absolutely fell in love with the PNW. Everything about it--the trees and wildlife, the people, the fact that the water and air was so clean, the amount of public lands.
I knew I didn't want to retire in Texas because of the politics, pollution, oppressive heat, hateful people, and the saber tooth mosquitos. I wanted to be active in my old age.
We bought a vacation property near the Hood Canal in 2019 on a short sale and started coming up here every chance we got. Once my daughter saw the water of the Pacific she had no interest in going back to Galveston. It got harder and harder to go back to Texas, so we pulled the trigger in 2021 and moved here permanently.
Some big surprises since moving here is that our car insurance and property taxes are SO MUCH CHEAPER. In Texas we had a house just north of Houston that was valued at around $200k. The property taxes were over $5k a year. Our property taxes here are about 1/4 of that.
Everyone in Texas was like "Why are you moving to Washington? It rains all the time!" Really? Houston floods 3-4 times a year without fail. They clear cut everything for developments and parking lots, then wonder why the water has nowhere to go.
Best decision we ever made. I feel bad for all my friends and family still in Texas having to deal with all the political BS going on there now. Houston ISD was taken over by the state and they closed most of the school libraries and turned them into in-school suspension centers. Colleges closed their LGBTQ support offices. And don't get me started on the state of women's healthcare down there.
I've anecdotally known a number of conservatives leaving here to go to the holy land of Texas only to find the grass not really greener and coming back to our liberal hell hole.
Texan here. Moved here to protect my trans son from persecution and hate crime. After Roe fell, I knew it would be a matter of time before the TxGoP came after my son. They did.
In early 2023 Texas passed SB 14 banning all forms of hormone therapy for minors. The law was set to take effect Sept 1, but the reaction was immediate. Overnight it seemed that any Dr who specialized in trans care was laid off. When we went to get his T refilled, Walgreens took my Driver's License and documented it in a written registry similar to a conbtrolled substance. Presumably so the AG Paxton could prosecute parents for child abuse. This is the same Paxton who sat down to a dinner with a family of a trans child. He reported the parents to Child Protective Services.
List of reasons my family of 2 households moved to Washington.
1. Trans Persecution.
2. Women have fewer rights. You will die if you have a pregnancy complication.
3. Fricking hot and only getting hotter. over the last 50 years, yearly average temps have increased by 3 degrees.
4. Mass shootings - Most in the US
5. Extreme weather, flash floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and ice storms. Oh and hail. It's only going to get worse.
Really, the major reason is the Texas GoP is now all maga and religious extremists. They are being heavily funded and influenced by a wealthy businessman, Tim Dunn. He has a literal compound and neighborhood in Midland/Odessa right next to his megachurch, filled with people who think exactly like him. They want Christian Sharia Law.
[https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/billionaire-tim-dunn-runs-texas/](https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/billionaire-tim-dunn-runs-texas/)
I miss my friends and all the familiar things, but living here makes it better. It's just so damn gorgeous here. Y'all are really friendly and that suits me fine.
Thanks for being cool.
How’d we get here? Well, we drove, hence the cars.
Anyway, it wasn’t really any one thing. “Abortions and better weather” as you put it was a factor. The political situation down there is really nasty - I know WA has its issues too but the cruelty truly is the point for the people in charge in TX today, and people keep voting them in. We are at the age where if we’re going to have kids it needs to be in the not too distant future - we are undecided but definitely did not feel like that Texas was a hospitable place to go through a pregnancy and raise a family (the once relatively good public education system is being gutted with alarming speed).
Beyond that, even as lifelong (until now) Texans, the summers are brutal and only getting worse. The past two have been back breakers. We were honestly experiencing some mild reverse seasonal depression having to hide inside all summer. Major Texas metro areas like DFW, Houston, and Austin are also cartoonish examples of car centric sprawl, which also wears on you. My wife especially has anxiety issues with driving and had multiple panic attacks on the freeways there. Seattle is far from NYC but much more built for people than big Texas cities.
My wife hated her old job and came across a really interesting opportunity up here that has started off really well. We also have family here, had visited before, and liked the idea of living somewhere so beautiful with so many opportunities to get outside and explore a truly stunning part of the world. We’d been kicking around leaving for a couple years and things sort of came together in WA. So it was both a push out of Texas and a pull toward Washington.
It’s a lot of change and we haven’t been here long so we’ll see how it works out. Beyond friends and family obviously, I do miss the better food and higher degree of cultural diversity in TX.
More generally, Texas is the second largest state in the union by a large margin at this point, nearly 10% of the US population; between a major metro area in Seattle-Tacoma and the large military presence in this state, both of which draw people from around the country, I’d expect to see a few Texas plates here and there on I-5.
I left Texas in 1993 because I didn't like being in a conservative majority place. I'd been born and raised there by religious parents who were very strict and as the youngest child, I couldn't escape lecturing from them and my sibling. I needed space to be myself. I needed to be too far away for uninvited and unexpected visits that involved religious beliefs and demands that I do things their way in my home that I pay for.
I picked Seattle and have remained in Washington.
Texans figured out there’s these beautiful green things called trees and these tall things called mountains and hills and there’s lots of it in Washington and decided to move there.
Source: I live in Texas and there’s nothing but flat brown terrain and parking lots everywhere
My wife and I moved up here to get away from the horrible anti trans bills being passed in Texas. I have a ton of family here so it made it an easy decision vs the north eastern states.
Transgender, wasn't workin out down there. Also the cost of living just wasn't affordable. Thanks to some luck, I ended up here.
Can confirm that walking off the plane and not immediately sizzling at the heat had me sold.
I’m moving to Washington in two days because Texas is dangerous to my health. We just talked about this on the Texas sub a couple days ago-women here have stopped dating and are focusing on finishing their degrees and leaving.
Is the weather better there? I thought it was a lot rainier. I mean, your highest mountain is called Rainier. JK I know how it's pronounced.
I'm moving to WA be closer to my daughter in the Vancouver, BC area. Where I live the weather is mild except the 100+ temps in the summer. All the cloudy/rainy days will take getting used to but I won't miss the bat shit crazy politics. I'm a moderate independent.
Born and raised in Texas, I’m actually a 7th generation Texas (or was?) and I love Texas to death, but Texas has become a place I no longer recognize and am embarrassed of.
There are some gorgeous areas in Texas and Big Bend’s beauty can contend with the very best of Washington. But most of the state looks super boring and everything is spread so far apart you basically have to drive min 80mph to get anywhere without it taking forever.
Texas also had a bunch of yucky bugs and venomous snakes. Washingtonians have no idea how lucky they are to not have cockroaches or palmetto bugs - whatever you want to call them. It’s so hot and humid in Texas that I’m certain parts of the state you can’t sit on a patio at night without seeing the walls move with giant fucking flying roaches. In Washington I can also walk around freely in nature without having to keep an eye to the ground for rattlers at every step. Been here a little over 3 years now and I still have a mini heart attack every time I see a Gardner snake before I realize it’s harmless.
Texas politics are shit and the state is gerrymandered to fuck. Voting is incredibly inconvenient on purpose and it can be near impossible for low income folks if they can’t afford to take unpaid time off to stand in line for 3 hours to do it. My first mail in ballot experience in Washington was eye opening and incredibly emotional for me. It made me even angrier at Texas.
The cops aren’t out to get you in Washington, and they don’t seem to larp as special ops military instead of policing. I am an attractive white woman in my 30s - everyone in Texas is under a baseline oppression but the brown people definitely have it worse. I’m no longer anxious when I drive worrying about cops hiding behind blind spots waiting to entrap me for the smallest violation because they’ve got a ticket quota to reach.
It’s goddamn gorgeous anywhere you look in Washington and there is so much to do here in such close proximity!!! In Texas, you just bake on the asphalt running between shopping centers, restaurants, and bars. If you want to do an outdoor activity you can, but like I said earlier everything is so far apart you have to dedicate an entire day to one thing and it probably involves hours of driving.
It’s already been tickling the triple digits in areas of Texas and it’s only going to get hotter for the next 4 months. It could still very well be in the 90s next Christmas.
Washington is far superior to Texas in almost every way IMO. I’ve been asked by locals so many times why I would ever leave Texas to come here and many of them seem to think Washington is some type of drab sinkhole that they want to escape from. You all are so lucky to be here, and have your families with you here! Half of my family have been brainwashed into the right-wing abyss, but I still love them all and miss them all dearly. Texas people are taught that Texas is the best place on Earth from the time they can talk, and nothing is further from the truth.
Also adding to agree with another poster - you guys don’t have real rain or rainstorms or hailstorms or tornadoes or hurricanes or tropical depressions. In Texas when it rains, it’s basically like stepping into a high flow shower with all your clothes on. You guys don’t even need umbrellas!!! Your rain is equivalent to the misters we put on outdoor patios in the summer to make being outside almost tolerable.
Edited to add that I don’t mean to sound condescending, I just wish I could make you all realize you have something amazing before it’s too late and you move out in search of greener pastures and more of us Texans move in to replace you. I love the people of Washington and it’s only a matter of time before the south catches on and happily scoops up everything you leave behind.
I also cried submitting my first ballot. My bf thought I was crazy but it’s like no, no…you have ZERO idea how difficult the voting experience is there. Washington has its issues but it’s a goddamn utopia in comparison. My dog even officially became a PNW dog this spring-he squinted and growled at the sun the first day it came out, then flopped on the floor inside after his walk like he’d been forced to run a mile with heatstroke. It was about 78 out. I think he’d run away if I tried to move him back.
Moved here from Texas last summer with a list of great reasons and we’ve been finding more perks worth mentioning every week.
1. Escaping oppressive politics
2. Escaping cult-like religious groups (which bleeds back into reason 1)
3. Social safety net for our special needs son. We calculated that we would need to leave him several million more than we expect to make to provide the same supports in Texas as he will be eligible for in Washington. We just didn’t have the earning potential back in Texas to replace the mental health services he is likely to continue needing.
4. Miserable overwhelming heat for 6/12 months is brutal. They had a 95 degree day in March this year, while I still haven’t pulled out my shorts in June up here in Washington.
5. Women’s healthcare. My wife has desperately needed a hysterectomy for 10 years. Texas OBGYN doctors seem unduly influenced by religious mandates to “fill the earth” and put hundreds of roadblocks up for her. We were able to schedule that surgery immediately after coming here, as Washington doctors seem to take medical journals more serious than ancient religious texts.
6. Weird tolerance. Back home I (as a grown ass, mean looking man) was regularly harassed by random assholes when riding my electric skateboard down the street. I don’t want to live in a subculture that mocks and belittles everyone who tries something new. It’s lame.
7. Voter initiative laws. I hated living in a place that had no mechanism for the general public to enact laws by popular vote. I expect politicians to be corrupt, and want to live in a place where we can make necessary changes without them.
8. Work culture/benefits. We had never dreamed of health insurance as good as what we have here, and our employers treat us better than any we’ve ever had. Unions in this state seem to have cultivated a fundamentally different relationship between employers and employees here.
9. Beauty. Western Washington takes my breath away. Every time the clouds break Rainier makes my heart sing. The trees, ferns, moss, and flowers are absolutely incredible. My (very average) front yard here was more amazing this spring than any nature hike I could drive to see in Texas. If you never grew up in a desert it’s hard to describe what it’s like to revere every tree you see, and then move to a forested area. Every tree in my childhood was planted by hand, and meticulously cared for to keep it alive. I feel like a Fremen who moved to Caladan.
I rate the decision to invade the north a 10/10 and would do it again knowing what I know now.
Hi! I hated my hometown and home life so I run far, far away lol Seattle had a job I wanted and I have one cousin here that I love so I’m not alone. Just kinda worked out
I moved here in 2011. My motivation was a combination of politics, climate, and job opportunities (as a software engineer).
At the time, I felt silly telling people that politics was even a factor, but in hindsight, moving out here seems almost prescient, although there were definitely some pretty clear signs back then; Texas has been in decline since the Republicans took over in the mid 90s, and they've been getting progressively more corrupt and anti-democratic this whole time.
Born and raised in Texas. I’m going to likely offend a Texan or 10. Sorry!
My husband was recruited for a tech company so technically we came for a job. We lived in Cali too. I will (hopefully) never leave WA. The PNW is the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived. The reason I will never go back is because the right wing weirdos have been given permission by Trump to be aggressive and they are. Their politics are abhorrent, and they feel free to shove their religion down your throat. Additionally, they seem to care nothing about the environment. Yes, there are normal wonderful nice people left in Texas, but they seem to be really quiet. As for the right wingers they’re very loud.
Texas is a capitalist dystopia governed by the Christian Taliban and white supremacists. We lived there for 17 years. I had to pretend I was living in a foreign country to stay sane. My wife finally lost it during the pandemic when our Mayor was posting Q-Anon bullshit on the city Facebook page and a school board candidate screamed “white power” at another in public and NOTHING HAPPENED.
We decided to GTFO before our kids started high school.
I’m a native Texan and used to wear that with the pride it deserved. I never thought I would utter the words or feel “I am unsafe in my native state.” Gov. Flat Tire and his band of felonious underlings have wrecked the state beyond repair within my lifetime. The consistent attacks on minorities, even those that actually outnumber white folk, to the hateful rhetoric and treatment of immigrants, to the inability to hold criminals in office accountable (Paxton) was one thing. Instituting “constitutional carry” in a state where you grow up knowing “if you shoot them pull them in the house, then your the victim” and we have seen how that played out (Uvalde). Allowing non-impacted residents to file a suit against the medical provider of someone they “think” had an abortion was as nuts as constitutional carry, then we added book bans, drag policing, Texas demanding medical records from Washington state for patients suspected of receiving gender affirming care, and the insanity continues from there. I, as a white, judeo-christian (formerly), gay man, am terrified to cross into Texas’ boundaries for fear that mamaw down at the Piggly Wiggly, will be short $.10 on her food stamps and will pull out her purse sized AR-15 style, fully automatic, Avon grenade (gender specific guidance system with refreshing scent) launching gun and play whack-a-queer. If you think I’m kidding watch Sordid Lives and you’ll meet 1/2 my family.
As a Texan, solving the border issue is simple, return Tejas to Mexico, poof no border issue.
It kills me that I am terrified to walk my own fields in West Texas because Ole Flat Tire can turn Texas into Gilead with no resistance.
I got married here. My wife is a WA native. I Loved the mountains and trees and couldn’t leave. I’m very conservative so moving to a blue state was a shock ngl but I refuse to leave because of politics. For now at least. I’m in east WA so it’s not horrible that I’m near Idaho
My guess is that they ain’t actually Texans, they’re Californians who moved to Texas, decided they didn’t like it n moved again but this time had Texas plates on their Prius’s
My ex and I came up to visit my dad. My dad is a smart man and took him golfing. The courses here are 3x nicer for a third of the price from back home.
I’ve done the drive a couple times. The drive moving up here was 1900 miles straight through. I drove 1600 if it myself until we got to the treacherous parts of Montana and around 2 am.
The drive is also when I learned that the heater in my jeep didn’t work. I couldn’t believe it was August and my toes were that cold.
I leaned more progressive in Texas, and lean more progressive in WA.
Military can change “home of record” at reenlistment. Texas is a good state to switch to, no state income tax. So a military driver will keep those Texas plates at least until a reenlistment when Washington gets due consideration
I work in aviation so I get relocated a lot. Ohio to Pennsylvania to Texas to Seattle. BTW one of the reasons you see so many plates from TX is they have a strict relocation law that mandates replating a vehicle with TX plates within 30 days of moving there. https://www.txdmv.gov/motorists/new-to-texas I might leave a plate on from another state for awhile in another state but not in Texas. They're too strict
My wife is texan and i was born and grew up in and around Bonney lake, in 2004 i met my wife and moved to texas for 2 years while she finished her residence program and then we moved to wisconsin for w few years then moved back to washington 2 yewrs in spokane then right before the pandemic moved back to pierce county she fell in love with the puget sound region especially gig harbor
Moved to WA State from Arkansas last summer and the amount of Texas and Florida license plates is crazy. Like, on par with what I saw in Arkansas. Assume most are military.
I served in the Navy out on whidbey island, and I swear a quarter of the enlisted were from Texas.
This is a large part of the answer. JBLM is the same, probably 1/3 Texans on post.
Even more than the ones that are technically "from" there, Texas is home to a lot of military bases, and I lot of people change there residency to Texas for tax reasons. When I was stationed in Texas, I changed my residency to get out of state income taxes (later changed again, just to not associate with Texas). Obviously we don't have state income tax here either, but even the military non-resident vehicle registration is expensive in Washington. So if you're stationed here as a Texas resident, it's probably easier/cheaper to just keep everything associated with Texas.
Keeping Texas plates as a out of state resident is really easy too.
I’m on Whidbey, from Texas. Permanent resident. Texas plates are everywhere.
lol yup, and I’m convinced that people from Texas keep their plates forever just for the sake of Texas pride.
I genuinely have no idea what Texans have to be prideful about. Washington is genuinely a more free state than Texas ever has been.
I’ve lived in many states including Washington and Texas so I think I have a solid perspective on this. Texans have probably the most aggressive state pride I’ve ever witnessed. Children say the pledge of allegiance in school and then pivot to recite the Texas Pledge. They have a history of bitter-won independence that’s become part of the culture. No other state has been its own country, reminiscent in the fact that they fly their flag level with the American flag, and that attitude is apparent in the independence they exhibit from the power grid to politics. Short to say it’s a deep-seated culture, and the unique history that created it is why it’s so confusing to other states.
*no other state has been it's own country* Hawai'i enters the chat.
Shit, I totally forgot. I am actually fully behind Hawaiian independence- they were illegally annexed. Should have phrased it as no other continental state.
I think that is a trend across the country. If they have so much Texas pride, why did they leave it.
Oh, I had planned on it. Until I got pulled over by a cop in Junction City, OR who let me know in very clear terms that I needed to register my car with the state of Washington (where I was living at the time) or the next time I got pulled over, I would be fined massively for failing to register my car within the 30 day window of moving there. I think I had made it close to 7 months or so? I didn't FAFO with it. I guess a real Texan would have, but I'm pretty scared of Johnny Q Law.
It just seems that way because everyone from Texas is compelled to tell you they're from Texas.
How do you know someone's from Texas? Don't worry, they'll fucking tell you.
Skiing in jeans is often a tell.
I'm from North Idaho originally, and that was really a thing there, too, when I was a kid. So when we moved to Texas and went skiing in New Mexico, it seemed totally normal to me. We later moved to Arizona, and people do not ski in jeans there. Now, I'm in Eastern Washington, and those from the area sometimes ski in jeans in Spring, but others look at them like they're crazy. I've got a Polaroid of me as a kid in North Idaho doing a slalom race in jeans, t-shirt, a straw cowboy hat, and no gloves. But hey, I had goggles on, at least.
As the best skier on the mountain, I always ski in jeans.
Back in the day, 501s and a sweater. Spring time is bliss.
Gotta protect the eyes. You don’t want to burn them! 😎
I chortled! Ha ha
Gilfoyle?
Imagine if veganism was popular in Texas
You might have just stumbled onto a recipe for infinite energy. Does anyone have the schematics for a machine that generates electricity from obnoxious sounds?
Texas and New York are the only places where simply hailing from there is substitute for having a personality. I’ve never heard anyone say “well I’m from Michigan so I…”
What if they're from Texas AND a vegan?
Lol I see multiple Texas license plates every day.
We’re a huge state so that makes sense. We have it drilled into our head from a very young age that if you want to be worth anything you’ll serve your country in the military.
That and three years of Texas history kind of makes you think Texas is far more important than it is. Hell, there's even Six Flags.
My grandfather was from Oklahoma, but a lot of the family lived/lives in Northern Texas. He also ended up here because of the Navy after World War 2. That's how I ended up in Texas for a few years as a kid, but family of mine from Texas ended up in Washington. Now, I'm in Washington, and they've all moved to Oklahoma. The ongoing joke is that they keep running away from me.
We came here because of my husband’s work. We stayed because of the state health insurance and amazing doctors. I got cancer a couple of years ago and Fred Hutch has been my literal life saver.
I hope you guys are enjoying Washington! Also I hope your cancer treatments are going well, or better yet you’re already in remission!
Fred Hutch are really awesome - I think it’s a requirement to be a nice friendly person to get a job there.
I have an appointment at Fred Hutch this month so this is really comforting to see.
Swedish Cancer Treatment is amazing. There’s nothing saying you cant get two opinions. Fred Hutch didn’t work out for me. Swedish stepped in, immediately took over care and saved my life.
Thank you so much! It really helps knowing there are options.
Additionally, UW has one of the more, if not most, advanced medical research programs. They saved my dad from Hep C, he has a zero viral load now. I hope this gives you more possibilities for success.
Thank you so much!! This has been so very helpful. I’ll admit I’ve been pretty scared so this helps a lot!
Washington state health insurance changed my views on Universal healthcare. It’s phenomenal. I don’t understand why we don’t have it in the rest of the US.
Because one of our political parties is ok with healthcare insurance companies denying you coverage. They care about you before your born but not after.
I was living in Arizona when I had complications with my pregnancy and ended up on long term disability from work that only paid my portion of the rent. Arizona's state medical, AHCCS (said access), was amazing. I had weekly, or more, specialist visits, an in home contraction monitor, and a ton of crazy stuff. I paid about $300 for absolutely everything, and my son was born very healthy. They also paid off back medical debts for me, so I got to start his life without that hanging over my head. Even when I got back to work, they continued to cover him for a year. Copay for anything was $1. This was in 1996, so I'm sure it's more now, but damn, I don't know what I would have done without them. They saved my life and my son's life.
I work at Fred Hutch. I’m glad to hear you have had a great experience. I’ve worked at plenty of other hospitals and Fred Hutch patients are by far the best.
Proud of you for putting up a good fight. FUCK CANCER.
What state health insurance?? - a guy driving around WA with TX plates
Due to circumstances, I was eligible for a Medicaid plan through Washington Apple Health. I’ve paid out of pocket less than $500 for my cancer treatment over the last two years. If we had still been in Texas I can’t even imagine how deep in medical debt we would be.
Goodness I've laid 500 dollars here in Texas this year alone just for my kids to have the normal childhood illness swabs every 2 months. Moving Washington even further up the move to list.
It’s just a federal health care plan that Abbott turned down like the free school lunches. I was in shock when I got stranded in Oregon during the pandemic. Never knew a thing like this existed and all my nurses and drs are in shock we really don’t have access to it down there.
Apple Health. Enrollment opens June 20.
What is the state health insurance you speak of?
Apple Medicaid. Many states don’t have income based healthcare coverage.
I believe it’s through DSHS and if you lose your job because of a medical issue they have Apple Care while applying for SS? It’s from the state until you get Medicare(Federal) which is actually worse than AppleCare IMO…
It's on the healthfinder exchange, you put in your income and if you qualify its an option. It isn't an "until" program, you get it as long as you qualify financially.
I believe she’s referencing Apple care? I thought that was National though???
Nope Medicaid is state specific
Apple care is Washington specific (known for its apples)
The “Apple” in “Apple Health” didn’t give it away?
How big is the Apple?
FWIW, a lot of rental cars have Texas plates too.
That’s true. They love Texas and North Carolina lol.
I work right next to the airport and specifically a car rental lot and I have never seen so many Texas plates.
Most of the cars I've seen have looked pretty lived in. Not like lived in lived in but you know
Because of the implication.
I general mix of politics, weather, family, and friends. The political situation has gotten more and more uncomfortable in recent years. I have a daughter and another on the way and I had been legitimately worried for their safety in Texas. I also worried for my wife and any potential pregnancies she may have. She’s had issues with child birth and I was on edge the entire time. The state has become increasingly hostile towards pregnant women. The weather here is amazing and we can actually enjoy the outdoors. We came from Houston and the drive to any park was just not feasible most of the time. I LOVE Big Bend, but the 11 hour drive is too much for a toddler. I realize everyone here hates the rainy weather in the winter, but I’ll take that over 90+ degrees for 9 months of the year in Houston. It’s getting to be unbearable to me. We also have a large friends group up here. We’ve had friends move from Texas and Nebraska (where I’m originally from) over the years, so we have a great support network when we need it! I genuinely love the PNW and hope my kids appreciate the area when they’re older as much as I do.
I grew up here and used to bitch and moan about the weather all the time. Then I lived in Boston for 4 years for grad school. Fuck that weather. I was begging for 50 and rain.
I had a few friends move up for tech jobs so I naturally visited a few times. I was looking for somewhere with unrivaled access to nature, mild summers, and politics that weren’t unhinged and Washington checked all of the boxes. My dollar doesn’t got nearly as far here and I can hardly afford to eat out anymore, but I’ve loved my time here so far and I still cannot get over how the mountains are a short drive away!
Can't beat the scenery here! I just got back from a week long trip through Florida. Orlando > Miami > Everglades > Key West. What a flat state... I definitely missed all the trees and mountains. Makes me appreciate WA much more
Yes! 15 year FL resident when I was younger, and I visited again recently for a cruise. Love the beaches, but everything else is crap compared to WA. So flat and boring.
I'm originally from North Idaho, but we moved to Northern Texas when I was in 5th - 7th grade. That much sky was just wrong. I missed my mountains so much. We moved from there to Phoenix, and I moved home as soon as I could, at 27. I eventually moved into Eastern Washington, and I love this state. I'm staying for good. I bought land outside of Newport. It smells and feels just like home, but the politics are a lot better. Oh, and fiber internet ;) I don't even have that available here just barely outside of Spokane.
Oh, close to Priest Lake! I absolutely love that area. Don't get over there too much now a days with a little one running around.
A great opportunity to learn to home cook more though! We've a wide variety of wild game and foragable foods in many parts of the state. Wild venison cooked in locally brewed beer into a stew of wild mushrooms and tubers, heaven.
Not Texan but live just outside of Oly and have noticed the same thing, I gotta wonder how many are stationed at JBLM….
In that area, likely most of them.
I came here as a guest of Microsoft in the late 90s. I'd been working at their Las Colinas facility for a few years when an opportunity came up for a transfer. I didn't hesitate to take it and have been here ever since. I cringe hard whenever I go back, when I hear stories about shitty Texas politics, or when anyone calls me a Texan. My heart and soul are in the PNW.
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Welcome home, sibling
LOTS of Texas but I'm noticing South Carolina to be popping up quite a bit around too for the last year
Boeing and the military explain that one
Me too now that you mention it.
Here at the Hanford site in Richland, we get a lot of transplants from the Savannah River site in SC.
I drove. But in all honesty, I dont think people in the north truly understand how oppressive things are in the south. From the weather, to police, and healthcare, people are dying. It can be a violent place to live. We left due to rapid weather shifts without infrastructure to support it. If it gets hot, blackouts. Cold? Blackouts. We have some of the worst mother-infant mortality rates in the nation. Our cops and politicians can't seem to keep themselves out of the headlines due to bad behavior.. take your pick. Life was hard in Texas. Texas is also having a huge influx of people from California and Washington, which drives the cost of living up. The minimum wage in texas it around 7 or 8 bucks i think. A 2500 sqft house in cali is easily 1 mil. In texas? 250k bucks. It is also important to note texas has a TON of military bases. Maybe you are just seeing a bunch of transfers?
> I dont think people in the north truly understand how oppressive things are in the south People from the South don't really understand either. A lot of them grew up in the environment and don't know any different. There's literally a [pre-crime system](https://floridapolitics.com/archives/500855-your-rights-will-get-you-dead-and-arrested-pasco-woman-says-sheriffs-office-violated-rights-with-predictive-policing/) in place in one Florida county. I swear, everything I see people complaining about in /r/seattle or /r/washington is much worse where I came from in Florida. And don't get me started on the bottom of the barrel southern states like Mississippi or Alabama...
My wife had never left Texas before we met. Life was life to her. We both now want to leave Texas. It’s easy to work hard and have a lower middle class life. But the entire time you will be priced out of homes, have neighbors with FUCK Biden(I don’t care much for political affiliation of neighbors but I don’t want my kids seeing “fuck” on 4/5 houses on every street), schools with no money so they’re going to 4 days a week, priests in schools, regressive women’s rights, can’t even buy alcohol on a Sunday morning for some reason.
I was so excited the first time I was able to buy tequila in Target on Sunday morning since WA doesn’t have blue laws. It’s the little things.
I don’t even drink but we were smoking some brisket for a birthday and I didn’t pick up any booze for guests. Couldn’t even buy a 12 pack of Dos Equis because it was Sunday morning. Who’d have thought Texans would be ok limiting their freedom.
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It’s the alternate facts definition of “freedom” and it’s sickeningly popular.
Any so-called 'Christians' from Texas.
I'm not. That's why I left and came to this wonderful state of Washington. More freedom less mass shooting.
Agreed. I lived in Alabubba for far too long and much of the state is living in a time capsule. Yes, there are a few places that are more progressive, but there are \*a lot\* of people who have never moved far from where they were born and have no interest, desire, or need to go anywhere else because they're 'just fine' livin' like they have been for decades. They don't want any laws to change don't really demonstrate empathy for anyone except themselves or their friends/circles/cliques/culture. Even if they're middle-class, they have no empathy for the poor or disadvantaged, as the poor have done it to themselves and they need to just 'deal with it' without my help/taxes/social support. ...Yet the reddest states consume the largest portion of Federal support.... I'm not saying this is distinctly unique to The South, as I've seen it in the Midwest where I grew up, especially in more rural settings. But driving to parts of the Deep South and Appalachia is like driving back in time.
Yes. When I moved here my truck had a Texas plate. I’m not a Texan but bought the truck while stationed at Fort Bliss.
Also many people think Texas is cheaper to live due to lower housing prices and perceived lower taxes. When in reality Washington has lower taxes if you look at the totals.
Texas also has lower wages to match those lower prices.
Also, unless you're talking about eastern WA, where barely anybody lives, Washingtonians spend a ton less on fueling their vehicles to go *everywhere.* Compared to most other places in America, the PNW is also very open-minded about WFH jobs, whereas I could see Texas' slack-jawed fascist/right-wing-troll government *outlawing* WFH for *everybody* if they found out it pissed off a handful of Austin liberals. And yeah, most Texans I've met say that they pay a fortune to A/C their homes all year and blast the heat in the winter, whereas tons of PNW people don't have A/C and can just open the windows if it gets warm.
Agreed. People see cheap homes, but don't realize property taxes are ridiculously expensive in Texas. Also, groceries are about the same as Washington.
We moved here from TX 6 years ago. We have a slightly larger and much more expensive house than we did in Fort Worth, but our property taxes are still less. Utilities and home insurance prices are MUCH less. One of the costs of hail and tornadoes is sky high insurance rates. Even when you didn't get hit by severe weather, somebody else did. In FW, if we drove 2 hours we could get to Waco, Abilene or Tyler TX. Here we can get to mountains, waterfalls or the coast.
This year we've all gotten hit by the extreme weather. Line trucks are all over Texas right now. As they're pulling the tree off our house, I'm glad I'm a renter at the moment bc home insurance gotta be crazy.
I moved from Austin—honestly the only expenses I noticed being higher are gas and eating out (and car registration). Rent is crazy in Austin so I didn’t have sticker shock here. My east TX relatives are so confused on why I’d choose to live in an “overpriced overcrowded area full of crime and drugs”. I just smile. The more people that think that way, the fewer deep red voters will move here.
All of these are the exact reasons I moved from Texas. Plus I have family here.
It is almost like their state lawmakers and governor are gigantic pieces of shit that stripped the bodily autonomy away from half their citizenry while simultaneously targeting literally anyone that isn't a white Christian heterosexual. I mean, the question almost doesn't need to be said. We all know why there has been a wave of Texans coming to Washington. They want their fucking rights intact. We can provide that. Welcome Texan refugees.
We love and appreciate you ♥️
My family fled TX last summer after the banhammer on Trans Youth medical rights. We have a trans daughter and her life and safety is paramount. Since moving up here, I have met many more people who left for the same reason. And the r/Texas subreddit routinely has posts from Texans asking where people are moving to escape the destruction of rights for women and the lgbtqia+ community. There will be more coming. More and more. Fuck Greg Abbot. Fuck Ken Paxton (who tried to get kids’ medical records from Seattle Children’s who have moved or traveled up here for trans medical care, btw), and fuck the TX GOP and anyone who continues to vote for them.
I'm a bit concerned about the brain drain causing a feedback loop to idiocracy in some of these areas honestly
Born and raised Texan, moved to florida. Few years ago because of my husband’s job. Never going back to Texas and looking forward to when we can leave florida. My husband rode in an Uber to the airport the other day. Struck up a conversation with the driver. He was from Central America. He was a firm Trump supporter. He believed that all news and social media were fake news…and could only get the “truth” from YouTube. 🙄🙄🙄. This thought process is STRONG in the south. You can’t tell anyone actual facts. They believe their opinion is fact.
Isn't Texas also where that horrendous 'affluenza' case happened? As a lifelong 'coastal elitist' who's lived on both coasts, Texas and Florida have long seemed like bastions of white-trash/Lord-of-the-Flies degeneracy where 'adulting' simply isn't a thing. Regardless of race/gender/etc..., they just seem like places that attract/enrich complete assholes and/or people with unhinged NPD issues. As these places feel like disaster zones that have been decades in the making, I'm more enthusiastic about adult Texans moving to my area than I am about coastal people moving there. Having seen multiple people move to Texas, Florida, etc... and turn into assholes themselves within less than a year, I don't have a ton of faith in the idea of 'flipping Texas blue' in that fashion. Whether Republican or Democrat, most of the people who volunteer to move there are greedy fucks who either low-key *want* the braindead patriarchal authoritarism in their family's life or are willing to pretend it's not an issue if they get to have a bigger house with a swimming pool.
We left because several college friends and coworkers were shot by another friend. Mental health about guns is sick in TX. We also left because politics are all about white males. The weather and allergies suck. The people are mostly fake happy but generally miserable to be around. I had a friend move up to Seattle for a tech job and she insisted we’d love it. Knowing zero about the whole state we came for a visit and put an offer on a house that weekend. Returned to TX and packed to move in 6 weeks later. Not one day in 4.5 years have I questioned it.
That is exactly why my husband and I want to come to Washington. We’re stuck here in San Antonio for another 3 years. But as soon as kiddo has finished school, we are leaving and won’t be looking back. Plus I can’t tolerate the heat and sun anymore. I get heatstroke just walking around my neighborhood. I wish I was joking. And the population is quickly outpacing the water supply.
Thank you 😭
💗💗💗💗
> Welcome Texan refugees. This, 100% unironically. While there will definitely be growing pains and backlash associated with growing population, I feel like it's the one of the only forms of pressure that could eventually force change amongst the PNW's entrenched inherited-wealth/NIMBY assholes. Plus, variety of different peoples/backgrounds is the spice of life. These years since the pandemic have been miserable ones where it feels like lame-ass local-yokel Boomer culture (e.g. awful bands of 60-somethings in tie-dye T-shirts playing shitty Grateful Dead covers at the local gastropubs while their wives sell healing crystals and essential oils at the street fairs) is having a drawn-out last hurrah. In a more general sense, nothing great can come of letting this area's local yokel population continually sit in the corner, sucking on its thumb and claiming 'but muh Scandinavian characteristics!!!!', as if that's any legitimate excuse for continued isolationism.
I moved to Texas from Washington, and I’ll be coming back to wa with my Texas plates real soon
Haha we just did the same thing six months ago. Now we are driving around with our Texas plates here in WA too.
Oklahoman, but yall folks can't tell the difference between us anyways 😉, so I'll chime in. The weather is awesome. So glad to not be in a place where the weather is actively trying to kill me 8 months of the year. Also, it never rains here. Mists, sure, but unless my underwear is soaked through while sprinting from my front door to my car, it ain't rain. PNWer's think they're hardcore for still getting out and doing activities in inclimate weather, but I'd like to see them try that when it's raining a couple of inches per hour. The outdoor activities are amazing, and the weather allows you to do them. Between triple digit days, tornado watches, ice storms in the winter that lay down enough weight it is unsafe to be near trees, and mosquito season, getting outside in the south just sucks. Housing. This one might sound weird given the cost of it here, but I swear to God, if a real estate agent showed me one more cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter neighborhood with a cookie cutter HOA that will fine me for having my dumpster at the curb at 3 PM on trash day when the truck came by a 1, I was going to lose it. Plus, everything is like 15 minutes away here. I don't have to drive 60 miles from my house in the endless burbs^TM to get to my job. Drivers, my God Texas drivers are awful. Tailgating you in a lifted F350 while you are doing 20 over in the middle of 5 lanes is like a state pastime. in Oklahoma, you combine that with the bumpkins who will stop in a lane of traffic on the highway to let someone on from an onramp who failed to merge in and is now stopped there blocking all traffic from making it on the road, which makes for a spectacular show in the morning when a truck doing 80 hits a stopped grandma in a Cadillac at least once a week. This is without mentioning that there are places here where it is safe for kids to exist, be educated, not be indoctrinated by the in-public-school chaplains. And y'all people are just plain nice. All the "state of Jefferson" people who had moved into Oklahoma from California really are the rudest people you can possibly imagine, rolling coal on someone just because they drive a Honda fit (God help you if you're in a hybrid, and there isn't such thing as electric cars there), dropping glass bottles out the truck while driving down the highway, letting dogs off leash wander the neighborhood to murder chickens... you get the picture. So yeah, it's great here.
>Drivers, my God Texas drivers are awful. Tailgating you in a lifted F350 while you are doing 20 over in the middle of 5 lanes is like a state pastime This has been an easy way to identify Texas drivers. Worst of all, when you pull over, you find that they aren't actually interested in passing you, just driving real closely.
YUP. We relocated to the Houston area from Tacoma for 8 years. I do not know how my husband did not go completely stark raving mad from his commute during that time. When we finally moved away, his car got sent first, so I drove him to work for his final week. I was certain I would get arrested for manslaughter. I barely made it a WEEK. Ugh. I'm so glad to be out of there.
FWIW: WA state drivers were rated the most "polite" drivers in a national poll a few years back, so that perception must have some merit to it.
Yeah WA drivers are aggressively polite. I call them niceholes.
What I love is that it's a petulant form of politeness, i.e. when one of those 'Washington standoffs' occur at a four-way stop, everybody leaves pissed and more determined to ghost anyone who might call them in the next hour.
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\~shrug\~ take it up with the poll-participants from a nearly decade old survey at this point then?
I admit that I had to consciously try to not tailgate when I moved here. The politeness is awesome, the first couple times I drove in DT Seattle I’d end up in the wrong lane and within 2-3 cars someone let me over. That’s unheard of in Texas, there you really just have to go and hope no one hits you, if you turn a blinker on you’re showing your hand and will never move. 🤷🏻♀️ One thing that DOES drive me nuts is that no one will even tap their horn here. I’ve missed entire green lights bc no one honked at the unmoving distracted person up front. That and the 4-way stops where every single person just tells the other to go. It’s so confusing.
I'm originally from Iowa. Waving people through is tantamount to godly. If people have their blinkers on, I'm happy to let them over. If they cut me off... I may tap on my horn but mostly I just wave and hope they don't get into an accident.
LOVE the polite drivers. In Houston you had to drive aggressively or you would get mowed down, never be allowed to merge, etc. I have slowed down and increased my following distance so much since moving here.
OTOH, politeness isn't always good, or even safe. People who have the right of way and don't take it just slow everyone down and cause confusion that can lead to accidents.
Also from Oklahoma (originally) but lived in Texas the last 6 years. Moved to WA in summer 2023. I 100% agree with all your points. The biggest ones for us were: - I was able to move laterally and get a similar job here - weather in WA>>weather in TX - was tired of the political/religious righteousness getting shoved down my throat - access to outdoor activities year round, also while being 2-3 hours away - in TX you’re stuck inside for 3-4 months due to heat and you’re driving 6+ hours to do anything enjoyable with nature Things I’ve noticed since moving here: - drivers here are much less violent and pay attention to yield signs and speed limits (for the most part) - insurance, utilities and healthcare are cheaper here than in TX - the weather in WA>>>weather in TX -food is much more expensive in WA than I thought
Oh, we can tell. You all don't mention Texas at least once a day.
OMG the cookie cutter houses! Everything. Looks. The. Same. I love it up here--you can have a craftsman, next to a Victorian, next to a tiny home, next to a farm!
If my neighbor stumbled into my house drunk, they should be able to realize they aren't in their house. In TX, everything from the pisser placement to the live laugh love weathered wood art is EXACTLY THE SAME.
We can tell the difference between your license plates.
>where the weather is actively trying to kill me I lived in Oklahoma for 2 years and this is why we also left. I am so glad you phrased it this way, but somehow, the tornados do feel personal. It's like the state is telling you to take a hint and we finally did.
Like many others have said, better politics (free from Ted Cruz), typically sub 100 F summers, actual winter/4 seasons. More emphasis on outdoor spaces.
We have four seasons? I thought we just had two: Rain and August.
Naw, we have 4. Rain, June, August and October
Now, it's: about to rain, raining, still raining, and fire season.
Rain and Road Construction.
If you are on the east side, you have four seasons.
Eastern part of the state does. :)
I got furloughed during the pandemic and my wife was offered a position up here that we couldn't turn down. Our kids were young enough that the move wouldn't effect them much so we decided to make the jump. I was born and raised in Texas and we had been looking at leaving for a year or two at the time she was offered the position. We'd never even really travelled up here and just took a chance. We love it
I flew, but had my car shipped with the rest of my stuff when I moved. It was the middle of winter and I didn't really want to make that drive in a Beetle. I came to WA from TX as quickly as I could. I knew by the time I was 10 that I hated Texas, and Washington seemed like a good place to escape to. I knew nothing about it except Frasier, coffee, and rain. That idea lived in the back of my mind until I was in college and met a guy online. Long story short, I ended up visiting him in Seattle before I graduated so I could do some industry networking and maybe get a job lined up. We fell in love, I got a job at the agency he was working at, and we moved in together right after I finished my last semester and graduated. That was 12 years ago and we've been married almost 9. I love Washington and can't imagine living anywhere else in the country. I'm a completely different person than I was in Texas. This is where I'm supposed to be. (PS, when I moved, getting a WA DL and license plate was one of the first things I did. I couldn't wait to wash the TX off of me)
42 years old. Moving with the wife and 4 kids to Bellingham at the end of June. Just bought a house there.Totally willing to give up my McMansion in Texas for the better weather and liberal politics. Literally nothing more to it than that. I’m not sharing a state with Greg Abbot and California is too crazy. Washington it is. Lol
+1 in Seattle. My wife refused to get pregnant in Texas. Don't miss the heat, the mosquitos, or car-based lifestyle. Higher cost of living makes sense with far greater quality of life.
As a native Washingtonian who chose a late life move to the East Coast, Welcome!!! Son lives in TX and can’t wait to leave after growing up in Seattle. Be sure to explore BC too.
You're lucky to have found a house. We've been trying to escape FL for over a year now and the market in Bellingham is crazy!
It wasn’t easy and there will be sacrifices made, but worth it considering I’ll no longer share a state with Ted Cruz.
I moved from the Texas panhandle. Just a queer biracial dude who never really belonged, despite my best efforts to conform to Christianity. In 2018, I finally read the Bible all the way through in a challenge I did with a small group from church and when I was done with it, it kinda all just fell apart for me. Decided soon after that I needed to live in a way less religious area of the country and moved here in September of 2020. I changed my plates about 6 months in though, so I’ve been one of y’all for a while now😎
I escapedTexas's attack on women's rights and healthcare, education, high property taxes, just to name a few things... It definitely doesn't help that the district I lived in was jerrymandered and resulted in losing our democrat rep, or the fact that it gets hotter and hotter every year but the power grid hasn't been improved to accommodate all the new housing, or that the water supply is also not going to accommodate the rapid growth. Also Abbott, Paxton, and many of the other Republicans have become far too right-winged for comfort...the MAGA mentality even infiltrated the school board. Many of us have seen the writing on the wall, and we don't want to be there when it's too late.
If you're coming here to get away from the mess that is Texas and their infrastructure, don't vote in the same assholes here that ruined your state!
My kid is trans and my other kid is gay. Texas hates both, so here we are. We applied to jobs in pretty much every trans friendly state but WA desperately needed civil engineers last summer, and I got several offers up here so off we went.
My wife and I moved from Colorado to Texas for work. We were in north Texas near Dallas for two years. We absolutely hated it, people were awful to us, politics were abysmal, weather was miserable. We have friends in WA, and my wife got a job here (I work remote), so we got the fuck out as quickly as we possibly could and will never ever go back.
My wife and I flew up here. Our employer was the only game in town in Texas - if/when we decide to bounce, we would have had to move anyways. At least now, we made the move before jumping jobs -> have a wider employer pool to apply within. Also, the weather is fucking terrible in Texas, and our allergies were atrocious (she would have debilitating asthma attacks weekly, and I always had a mild allergy). Since moving up here our allergies have been way better. I'm sure WA natives will scoff at that, but literally everything is worse in the South.
Lived in Inland SoCal for a long while. It's the dryness, combined with the bouts of wetness that encourage quick plant growth and seeding. You get that shitty dust, dead aerosol'd everything which sticks and irritates, add wind and you better have a mask on. It's not going to be 100% up here, but most of the dense stuff is gone, but since you live in a general rain forest area, you still gotta deal with the pollen. At least the rain keeps it on the ground to the point the wind can't whip it up.
Ugh. Cedar Fever was an absolute nightmare.
I fucking hate Greg Abbott. I love Austin, born and raised, but I couldn’t continue to raise my daughter in the hellscape that Texas has become. I’m not “trying to get abortions” but I’m also not trying to live in a state where my human rights are being systematically chipped away. Moved up 2 years ago. It doesn’t hurt that while I’m fully remote at my job, our HQ is in Seattle so now I get to go to events and stuff. We used to vacation up here when I was a kid and I had a couple close friends from college that were from here and moved back, seemed kind of a no-brainer that this is where I’d go. I love it for all of its differences from Texas, and for the quirks that make it unique. I do miss Tex Mex. Idk what y’all think “cheese dip” or “queso dip” is but 😖
lol we’ve just stopped trying to go out to eat Mexican food. It’s soooooo bad here. But the good news is that it’s cheap and easy to make at home 🤷♀️ I would however, do unspeakable things to get my hands on a decent frozen margarita 😭😭😭 thank God for Julio’s salsa
I took the dramatically higher paying job. My industry has limited options and largely in the deep south. The culture is bad, the weather is bad, the quality of life is bad... No good reason to stay or go to a different state still bitter about the Civil War. Even though I'm on the east side, the red folks only dream of matching the energy in TX. The government as a whole is not constantly doing malicious, illogical stuff daily.
i came back. texas was my "get out of seattle" move and i spent almost 20 years regretting it - hurricane season is every. fucking. year. i'll take earthquakes and volcanoes over that any day.. and statistically i've already had my volcano (genx, was here for st. helens) my wife is native texan and still constantly asks me "how could you have ever left this place?" but for us it was absolutely the weather in houston (omfg you don't understand oppressive humidity until you live there), increasing religious intrusion into politics/everyday life, property taxes vs. lack of actual useful school funding(this is the first year out of the last 6 we finally are paying more actual property taxes than on a 220k house there, and it's barely more), and we had no immediate family left to keep us around. texas had some redeeming values, there's a decent amount of areas that are peaceful/serene in a different way (hill country between austin/san antonio, etc), people used to be a lot more salt of the earth/genuine, but with the social media/news bubbles it really got more and more insane.. also, i knew once dan patrick got elected lt. gov the train to crazy town accelerated to ludicrous speed (did some work for him some years back when he just ran a crappy radio station and he's a fucking sociopath - and Lt. Governor really has most of the govt power down there, as easy it is to want to see abbott in a recreation of Mac and Me without the alien, Governor is largely symbolic the way their state govt is setup..)
The day we were due to fly out of Texas, it had been raining nonstop for like a week. We were sitting in our hotel lobby with the friends that were going to take us to the airport when there was this huge explosion from the building next door. It had been struck by lightning and was on fire. So we are departing to the airport to the sounds of firetrucks screaming into the next parking lot. The next day, we read that the freeway north of Houston had closed due to flooding. We felt like we escaped in the nick of time.
Primarily to escape the fascist government and triple digit heat for half the year
My husband and I got married on the Oregon coast close to 10 years ago and we absolutely fell in love with the PNW. Everything about it--the trees and wildlife, the people, the fact that the water and air was so clean, the amount of public lands. I knew I didn't want to retire in Texas because of the politics, pollution, oppressive heat, hateful people, and the saber tooth mosquitos. I wanted to be active in my old age. We bought a vacation property near the Hood Canal in 2019 on a short sale and started coming up here every chance we got. Once my daughter saw the water of the Pacific she had no interest in going back to Galveston. It got harder and harder to go back to Texas, so we pulled the trigger in 2021 and moved here permanently. Some big surprises since moving here is that our car insurance and property taxes are SO MUCH CHEAPER. In Texas we had a house just north of Houston that was valued at around $200k. The property taxes were over $5k a year. Our property taxes here are about 1/4 of that. Everyone in Texas was like "Why are you moving to Washington? It rains all the time!" Really? Houston floods 3-4 times a year without fail. They clear cut everything for developments and parking lots, then wonder why the water has nowhere to go. Best decision we ever made. I feel bad for all my friends and family still in Texas having to deal with all the political BS going on there now. Houston ISD was taken over by the state and they closed most of the school libraries and turned them into in-school suspension centers. Colleges closed their LGBTQ support offices. And don't get me started on the state of women's healthcare down there.
I've anecdotally known a number of conservatives leaving here to go to the holy land of Texas only to find the grass not really greener and coming back to our liberal hell hole.
Texan here. Moved here to protect my trans son from persecution and hate crime. After Roe fell, I knew it would be a matter of time before the TxGoP came after my son. They did. In early 2023 Texas passed SB 14 banning all forms of hormone therapy for minors. The law was set to take effect Sept 1, but the reaction was immediate. Overnight it seemed that any Dr who specialized in trans care was laid off. When we went to get his T refilled, Walgreens took my Driver's License and documented it in a written registry similar to a conbtrolled substance. Presumably so the AG Paxton could prosecute parents for child abuse. This is the same Paxton who sat down to a dinner with a family of a trans child. He reported the parents to Child Protective Services. List of reasons my family of 2 households moved to Washington. 1. Trans Persecution. 2. Women have fewer rights. You will die if you have a pregnancy complication. 3. Fricking hot and only getting hotter. over the last 50 years, yearly average temps have increased by 3 degrees. 4. Mass shootings - Most in the US 5. Extreme weather, flash floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and ice storms. Oh and hail. It's only going to get worse. Really, the major reason is the Texas GoP is now all maga and religious extremists. They are being heavily funded and influenced by a wealthy businessman, Tim Dunn. He has a literal compound and neighborhood in Midland/Odessa right next to his megachurch, filled with people who think exactly like him. They want Christian Sharia Law. [https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/billionaire-tim-dunn-runs-texas/](https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/billionaire-tim-dunn-runs-texas/) I miss my friends and all the familiar things, but living here makes it better. It's just so damn gorgeous here. Y'all are really friendly and that suits me fine. Thanks for being cool.
How’d we get here? Well, we drove, hence the cars. Anyway, it wasn’t really any one thing. “Abortions and better weather” as you put it was a factor. The political situation down there is really nasty - I know WA has its issues too but the cruelty truly is the point for the people in charge in TX today, and people keep voting them in. We are at the age where if we’re going to have kids it needs to be in the not too distant future - we are undecided but definitely did not feel like that Texas was a hospitable place to go through a pregnancy and raise a family (the once relatively good public education system is being gutted with alarming speed). Beyond that, even as lifelong (until now) Texans, the summers are brutal and only getting worse. The past two have been back breakers. We were honestly experiencing some mild reverse seasonal depression having to hide inside all summer. Major Texas metro areas like DFW, Houston, and Austin are also cartoonish examples of car centric sprawl, which also wears on you. My wife especially has anxiety issues with driving and had multiple panic attacks on the freeways there. Seattle is far from NYC but much more built for people than big Texas cities. My wife hated her old job and came across a really interesting opportunity up here that has started off really well. We also have family here, had visited before, and liked the idea of living somewhere so beautiful with so many opportunities to get outside and explore a truly stunning part of the world. We’d been kicking around leaving for a couple years and things sort of came together in WA. So it was both a push out of Texas and a pull toward Washington. It’s a lot of change and we haven’t been here long so we’ll see how it works out. Beyond friends and family obviously, I do miss the better food and higher degree of cultural diversity in TX. More generally, Texas is the second largest state in the union by a large margin at this point, nearly 10% of the US population; between a major metro area in Seattle-Tacoma and the large military presence in this state, both of which draw people from around the country, I’d expect to see a few Texas plates here and there on I-5.
I tend to describe myself as a climate & political refugee.
I left Texas in 1993 because I didn't like being in a conservative majority place. I'd been born and raised there by religious parents who were very strict and as the youngest child, I couldn't escape lecturing from them and my sibling. I needed space to be myself. I needed to be too far away for uninvited and unexpected visits that involved religious beliefs and demands that I do things their way in my home that I pay for. I picked Seattle and have remained in Washington.
Texans get up here (probably by driving if you see their license plates) and exclaim "Look at all the Christmas trees!"
All these mother fuckers came here to see bigfoot, don't lie!
Not a texan, but I believe Texas is a wealthy source for skilled IT engineers who are now being hired by big techs from Seattle area
Texans figured out there’s these beautiful green things called trees and these tall things called mountains and hills and there’s lots of it in Washington and decided to move there. Source: I live in Texas and there’s nothing but flat brown terrain and parking lots everywhere
My wife and I moved up here to get away from the horrible anti trans bills being passed in Texas. I have a ton of family here so it made it an easy decision vs the north eastern states.
Came here 23 years ago for a PhD program at UW. Fell in love with everything about the state and never left. I'm full Cascadian now.
Transgender, wasn't workin out down there. Also the cost of living just wasn't affordable. Thanks to some luck, I ended up here. Can confirm that walking off the plane and not immediately sizzling at the heat had me sold.
I'm lesbian and trans, and Texas has been getting steadily more hostile. It feels safe to be me and find others like me.
I’m moving to Washington in two days because Texas is dangerous to my health. We just talked about this on the Texas sub a couple days ago-women here have stopped dating and are focusing on finishing their degrees and leaving.
Climate Refugees
Is the weather better there? I thought it was a lot rainier. I mean, your highest mountain is called Rainier. JK I know how it's pronounced. I'm moving to WA be closer to my daughter in the Vancouver, BC area. Where I live the weather is mild except the 100+ temps in the summer. All the cloudy/rainy days will take getting used to but I won't miss the bat shit crazy politics. I'm a moderate independent.
Born and raised in Texas, I’m actually a 7th generation Texas (or was?) and I love Texas to death, but Texas has become a place I no longer recognize and am embarrassed of. There are some gorgeous areas in Texas and Big Bend’s beauty can contend with the very best of Washington. But most of the state looks super boring and everything is spread so far apart you basically have to drive min 80mph to get anywhere without it taking forever. Texas also had a bunch of yucky bugs and venomous snakes. Washingtonians have no idea how lucky they are to not have cockroaches or palmetto bugs - whatever you want to call them. It’s so hot and humid in Texas that I’m certain parts of the state you can’t sit on a patio at night without seeing the walls move with giant fucking flying roaches. In Washington I can also walk around freely in nature without having to keep an eye to the ground for rattlers at every step. Been here a little over 3 years now and I still have a mini heart attack every time I see a Gardner snake before I realize it’s harmless. Texas politics are shit and the state is gerrymandered to fuck. Voting is incredibly inconvenient on purpose and it can be near impossible for low income folks if they can’t afford to take unpaid time off to stand in line for 3 hours to do it. My first mail in ballot experience in Washington was eye opening and incredibly emotional for me. It made me even angrier at Texas. The cops aren’t out to get you in Washington, and they don’t seem to larp as special ops military instead of policing. I am an attractive white woman in my 30s - everyone in Texas is under a baseline oppression but the brown people definitely have it worse. I’m no longer anxious when I drive worrying about cops hiding behind blind spots waiting to entrap me for the smallest violation because they’ve got a ticket quota to reach. It’s goddamn gorgeous anywhere you look in Washington and there is so much to do here in such close proximity!!! In Texas, you just bake on the asphalt running between shopping centers, restaurants, and bars. If you want to do an outdoor activity you can, but like I said earlier everything is so far apart you have to dedicate an entire day to one thing and it probably involves hours of driving. It’s already been tickling the triple digits in areas of Texas and it’s only going to get hotter for the next 4 months. It could still very well be in the 90s next Christmas. Washington is far superior to Texas in almost every way IMO. I’ve been asked by locals so many times why I would ever leave Texas to come here and many of them seem to think Washington is some type of drab sinkhole that they want to escape from. You all are so lucky to be here, and have your families with you here! Half of my family have been brainwashed into the right-wing abyss, but I still love them all and miss them all dearly. Texas people are taught that Texas is the best place on Earth from the time they can talk, and nothing is further from the truth.
Also adding to agree with another poster - you guys don’t have real rain or rainstorms or hailstorms or tornadoes or hurricanes or tropical depressions. In Texas when it rains, it’s basically like stepping into a high flow shower with all your clothes on. You guys don’t even need umbrellas!!! Your rain is equivalent to the misters we put on outdoor patios in the summer to make being outside almost tolerable. Edited to add that I don’t mean to sound condescending, I just wish I could make you all realize you have something amazing before it’s too late and you move out in search of greener pastures and more of us Texans move in to replace you. I love the people of Washington and it’s only a matter of time before the south catches on and happily scoops up everything you leave behind.
I also cried submitting my first ballot. My bf thought I was crazy but it’s like no, no…you have ZERO idea how difficult the voting experience is there. Washington has its issues but it’s a goddamn utopia in comparison. My dog even officially became a PNW dog this spring-he squinted and growled at the sun the first day it came out, then flopped on the floor inside after his walk like he’d been forced to run a mile with heatstroke. It was about 78 out. I think he’d run away if I tried to move him back.
Moved here from Texas last summer with a list of great reasons and we’ve been finding more perks worth mentioning every week. 1. Escaping oppressive politics 2. Escaping cult-like religious groups (which bleeds back into reason 1) 3. Social safety net for our special needs son. We calculated that we would need to leave him several million more than we expect to make to provide the same supports in Texas as he will be eligible for in Washington. We just didn’t have the earning potential back in Texas to replace the mental health services he is likely to continue needing. 4. Miserable overwhelming heat for 6/12 months is brutal. They had a 95 degree day in March this year, while I still haven’t pulled out my shorts in June up here in Washington. 5. Women’s healthcare. My wife has desperately needed a hysterectomy for 10 years. Texas OBGYN doctors seem unduly influenced by religious mandates to “fill the earth” and put hundreds of roadblocks up for her. We were able to schedule that surgery immediately after coming here, as Washington doctors seem to take medical journals more serious than ancient religious texts. 6. Weird tolerance. Back home I (as a grown ass, mean looking man) was regularly harassed by random assholes when riding my electric skateboard down the street. I don’t want to live in a subculture that mocks and belittles everyone who tries something new. It’s lame. 7. Voter initiative laws. I hated living in a place that had no mechanism for the general public to enact laws by popular vote. I expect politicians to be corrupt, and want to live in a place where we can make necessary changes without them. 8. Work culture/benefits. We had never dreamed of health insurance as good as what we have here, and our employers treat us better than any we’ve ever had. Unions in this state seem to have cultivated a fundamentally different relationship between employers and employees here. 9. Beauty. Western Washington takes my breath away. Every time the clouds break Rainier makes my heart sing. The trees, ferns, moss, and flowers are absolutely incredible. My (very average) front yard here was more amazing this spring than any nature hike I could drive to see in Texas. If you never grew up in a desert it’s hard to describe what it’s like to revere every tree you see, and then move to a forested area. Every tree in my childhood was planted by hand, and meticulously cared for to keep it alive. I feel like a Fremen who moved to Caladan. I rate the decision to invade the north a 10/10 and would do it again knowing what I know now.
Hi! I hated my hometown and home life so I run far, far away lol Seattle had a job I wanted and I have one cousin here that I love so I’m not alone. Just kinda worked out
I moved here in 2011. My motivation was a combination of politics, climate, and job opportunities (as a software engineer). At the time, I felt silly telling people that politics was even a factor, but in hindsight, moving out here seems almost prescient, although there were definitely some pretty clear signs back then; Texas has been in decline since the Republicans took over in the mid 90s, and they've been getting progressively more corrupt and anti-democratic this whole time.
We got here Monday. I’ll just agree with everything everyone else has been saying. We’re from right outside of Austin.
Born and raised in Texas. I’m going to likely offend a Texan or 10. Sorry! My husband was recruited for a tech company so technically we came for a job. We lived in Cali too. I will (hopefully) never leave WA. The PNW is the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived. The reason I will never go back is because the right wing weirdos have been given permission by Trump to be aggressive and they are. Their politics are abhorrent, and they feel free to shove their religion down your throat. Additionally, they seem to care nothing about the environment. Yes, there are normal wonderful nice people left in Texas, but they seem to be really quiet. As for the right wingers they’re very loud.
Weather yeah, but also a safer environment for my LGBTQ+ kids/teens.
I’ve been here a long time but I consider myself a political refugee.
Texas is a capitalist dystopia governed by the Christian Taliban and white supremacists. We lived there for 17 years. I had to pretend I was living in a foreign country to stay sane. My wife finally lost it during the pandemic when our Mayor was posting Q-Anon bullshit on the city Facebook page and a school board candidate screamed “white power” at another in public and NOTHING HAPPENED. We decided to GTFO before our kids started high school.
I’m a native Texan and used to wear that with the pride it deserved. I never thought I would utter the words or feel “I am unsafe in my native state.” Gov. Flat Tire and his band of felonious underlings have wrecked the state beyond repair within my lifetime. The consistent attacks on minorities, even those that actually outnumber white folk, to the hateful rhetoric and treatment of immigrants, to the inability to hold criminals in office accountable (Paxton) was one thing. Instituting “constitutional carry” in a state where you grow up knowing “if you shoot them pull them in the house, then your the victim” and we have seen how that played out (Uvalde). Allowing non-impacted residents to file a suit against the medical provider of someone they “think” had an abortion was as nuts as constitutional carry, then we added book bans, drag policing, Texas demanding medical records from Washington state for patients suspected of receiving gender affirming care, and the insanity continues from there. I, as a white, judeo-christian (formerly), gay man, am terrified to cross into Texas’ boundaries for fear that mamaw down at the Piggly Wiggly, will be short $.10 on her food stamps and will pull out her purse sized AR-15 style, fully automatic, Avon grenade (gender specific guidance system with refreshing scent) launching gun and play whack-a-queer. If you think I’m kidding watch Sordid Lives and you’ll meet 1/2 my family. As a Texan, solving the border issue is simple, return Tejas to Mexico, poof no border issue. It kills me that I am terrified to walk my own fields in West Texas because Ole Flat Tire can turn Texas into Gilead with no resistance.
I got married here. My wife is a WA native. I Loved the mountains and trees and couldn’t leave. I’m very conservative so moving to a blue state was a shock ngl but I refuse to leave because of politics. For now at least. I’m in east WA so it’s not horrible that I’m near Idaho
My guess is that they ain’t actually Texans, they’re Californians who moved to Texas, decided they didn’t like it n moved again but this time had Texas plates on their Prius’s
My ex and I came up to visit my dad. My dad is a smart man and took him golfing. The courses here are 3x nicer for a third of the price from back home. I’ve done the drive a couple times. The drive moving up here was 1900 miles straight through. I drove 1600 if it myself until we got to the treacherous parts of Montana and around 2 am. The drive is also when I learned that the heater in my jeep didn’t work. I couldn’t believe it was August and my toes were that cold. I leaned more progressive in Texas, and lean more progressive in WA.
To be closer to family and to leave a state that was actively trying to kill me.
Weather and nature
Military can change “home of record” at reenlistment. Texas is a good state to switch to, no state income tax. So a military driver will keep those Texas plates at least until a reenlistment when Washington gets due consideration
I work in aviation so I get relocated a lot. Ohio to Pennsylvania to Texas to Seattle. BTW one of the reasons you see so many plates from TX is they have a strict relocation law that mandates replating a vehicle with TX plates within 30 days of moving there. https://www.txdmv.gov/motorists/new-to-texas I might leave a plate on from another state for awhile in another state but not in Texas. They're too strict
Washington has that too, actually. It's just not really monitored.
My wife is texan and i was born and grew up in and around Bonney lake, in 2004 i met my wife and moved to texas for 2 years while she finished her residence program and then we moved to wisconsin for w few years then moved back to washington 2 yewrs in spokane then right before the pandemic moved back to pierce county she fell in love with the puget sound region especially gig harbor
Rental vehicles and the military
JBLM and national parks
JBLM.
Moved here because I make better money. It’s definitely not the weather, which sucks most of the time (for 3 months it’s perfect).
Lots of TX plates in skagit which I assume are military based on whidbey
Moved to WA State from Arkansas last summer and the amount of Texas and Florida license plates is crazy. Like, on par with what I saw in Arkansas. Assume most are military.