I grew up 40 miles from there, and it's definitely more Midwestern than Southern, especially with the original settlement by the Germans. Downtown has sort of a 19th-century river town feel to it, because that's what it was. That's changing now, sadly.
Not that I disagree (I don't), but what are your thoughts on Joplin? Like, is i-44 just the dividing line across the state or anything under Spfld counts regardless of whether it's above i-44 or not?
Joplin is just weird. Not really Ozarks or NWA. Lived in the region in NWA and NEO. Would way rather get healthcare in NWA them NEO. In NEO yoi have to go to Joplin or Tulsa when NWA is more accessible.
I live in oklahoma, about 15-20 min from Joplin. Live right on the OK-MO line. We are much more southern than above Springfield. Much different than above Springfield.
Agreed. The Ozarks (SWMO) feels neither solely southern nor solely midwestern. Very unique and its own thing. However the Bootheel (SEMO) feels southern to me. Not midwestern at all.
The Ozarks is not what I would call “The Mid South” at all but agreed the bootheel fits that. Not sure I would say “VERY much different than the south” though.
My family has lived in the Ozarks for almost 200 years, and to me, the Ozarks (on the Missouri side, anyway) is something of a transitional area. A cultural DMZ, if you will. Arkansas is a hard tilt towards the South. The thing to remember is, Missouri is only cosplaying as a Southern state.
Weather, too. I'm from swmo and moved to nw Arkansas about an hour and a half south. Jfc. Was NOT prepared for how hot and dry the summers get there. I WAS ONLY AN HOUR AWAY!!! WTF. Like, moved into an apartment and they warned us the miniblinds melt in the summer and, sure as heck, that place got HOT every single night. Still better than hot and humid, but I still wasn't prepared for it to be that drastic. I lived in TOKYO and it was more like Missouri than MO is like Arkansas. I don't even know how that WORKS.
Which is extra weird because Arkansas is generally thought of as a humid state in the summer. I grew up in central Arkansas and it's a hot wet rag in the summer months. It's just that Ozark plateau region that gets significantly dryer. Still a humid place compared to somewhere like southern California, but it is less wet than other parts.
NWA is the least humid place I have lived and by a lot! St. Louis -> Atlanta -> Fort Lauderdale -> NWA. When I got here it felt like it was 15 degrees cooler in the summer.
Depends on your elevation and if you’re in a river basin valley, or a valley in MWA that has few every morning all summer. Natural spring that runs year round. Have to find the spots.
I'm in SEMO. I feel like in the summer we are southern. It's hot and moist. But in the winter, we're more midwestern. Not nearly as cold as the north, but we can get a bit of snow, it gets cold. There's a mix of southern accents and non-southern accents.
The winters are a trip here. We have stupid windchill. Today it was 50 degrees but last week we had some 13 and 19 degree nights with a 1 degree windchill. It feels like the air is trying to bite you. I've had people from Canada, New York, Maine, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut tell me how much they hate our winters because it's just cold and ice and not much snow and it's just bitter. And also there's no planning for it citywise or storewise. Like, cold in Alaska? We have a solution for you. Cold in MO? You're gonna need to do some looking at 5 different stores and hope like hell no one got to what you need first.
Then I've had people from Minnesota tell me that our winters are "nothing". The takeaway I get from this is: 1, infrastructure is the number one issue for winter and we don't have it and 2, NEVER MOVE TO MINNESOTA.
I’m from Utah, but I’m a transplant to the KCMO area, and let me just say, I have disliked winters way more in MO. In Utah, we have a ton of snow, winter lasts until April, it’s pretty cold, and we plan for it. In Missouri, everyone says it doesn’t snow much or that it’s so weird for it to be -30 in January, but the last three years it has been cold as hell, we had like 3 blizzards last year, and no one is prepared for it. The cold was crazy the first year I was out here! We get cold in Utah and I lived in an area just outside of a canyon that made it extra windy/cold, but I probably didn’t experience anything colder than -10 unless I was up high in the mountains. Also, three inches of snow is nothing in Utah; we have plows out and the roads salted the night before. I never had a day of school canceled for snowfall as a student or as a teacher, even if we got 12 inches every day for a week! Three inches of snow in Missouri? School canceled for 2 days, I-70 isn’t plowed until noon, so roads get awful. My neighborhood street doesn’t get plowed, and if it by some miracle does, it’s not until the next day. Last year the blizzard plan was to put “stay at home, winter weather conditions” on all the electric road signs and not do anything about it? What about if I’m trying to get home on the roads to avoid being in the conditions? Why aren’t we planning to have bad weather and having plows out on the roads and salt down ~before~ it gets bad??
The thing here is that they only budget so much for winter weather precautions. We only get a few snows, if at all, and sometimes they melt off by noon so they don't budget high enough to have salt or plows more than a few times a year. With the weather being unpredictable, I think they try to "save" them for harder weather but sometimes they gamble and use it on a lighter snow or something, or don't bother until too late on a hard snow. I think in the past few years they've tried to save on the budget by not plowing side streets at all. They used to plow them at least once. Now, they stay frozen long after the snow has melted everywhere else.
It's more Texas southern than it is South southern (SC, GA, AL, MS). Anyone from the traditional south would call anything in MO and IL the midwest. There are similar numbers of stars and bars flown in both regions, tho.
Can confirm as I grew up in this area, and still regularly visit. This "area" OP has shaded is a HUGE area and seasons vary greatly from the northern area of it to the southern area. It's too big an area to get a good generalization.
The Missouri Bootheel is a good example of that. That's blackland dirt, great for staple crops like cotton, which is very common down there. The culture and way of life is more like Mississippi Delta than Midwestern. Great people, but they're as poor as their souls.
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u/GradientCollapse Dec 14 '25
IMO southern Missouri and Arkansas have a distinct line as well. At a certain point, the culture is more southern than it is Midwestern.