I’ve lived in metro area NY for my whole life, except for a year outside of SF CA when I was about 9.
For me, what’s harder now that I’m in my 50’s is that the cold really sinks into my bones, it seems, and it can take me a long time to warm back up. It’s ok if I am just going from the house to the car or from the car to the store or the movie theater or someone’s house, but if I’m outside for any length of time and get cold, forget it, I’ll be cold for hours. Also, I tend to hesitate wanting to take risks as far as being afraid to slip and fall on ice. That said, when it snows, you’re only stuck in the house for a day or a day and a half after a bad storm. Then everyone is getting shoveled out and taking the cars out the following day. So it’s a day of prep where everyone is panicking, in the store, buying bread and milk and acting like it’s a holday, and then the day in the house and then the next day, up and out.
Spring and fall can be chilly or they can be warm – hard to predict. Summer here this year wasn’t so bad. Unpredictable now with global warming. I’ve been down to VA in the summer and vowed never again. So hot, so humid, like a steam bath.
We had a few major storms (hurricanes and tornadoes) in the past ten years, in October and November, which we never used to have when I was little. Snow in October, power outages for days – stuff like that. Things are changing.
If I were you, as someone suggested above, do an extended trip here in the winter and see how you like it. Also think about your relationships with the people you know that are here. Are you close? Are you going to spend time with them or is it going to be once or twice a year that you see them? As you know, it’s hard to make friends as you get older (if you want friends) but sometimes, if you join clubs (book groups and things like that), you can broaden your social horizons that way. I belong to a book group which started at a public library in an affluent CT town, and now has become a dinner group/book group which meets at the house of one of the members. I call it a “book group that became a group of friends.” We meet for dinner sometimes at local restaurants, too, which is nice.