To add something more substantial to the thread regarding places I've lived... most of my adult life (and most of my career) was spent here in Colorado, where the second you left the house, you were chasing away. Over a gap of about 8 years, I lived in Illinois and Kansas...
COLORADO: One thing that's hard to argue with is the awesomeness that is chasing Colorado. So many days show up the morning of and you can easily get out east to play them. Some of my best chases have been here (Akron '23 comes to mind). If you have a love of storms in general (including structure, hail, etc), then you'll be hard-pressed to find a better place to base from. It also has the perk of peaking later in the season when things wind down a bit, and it's "out of the way" for a lot of the central plains folks, and that morning-of often means smaller crowds. Yes, you are always chasing away from home, so that does sometime leash you a little, particularly if you can't afford an overnight stay. Every hour east you chase is an hour west you have to drive. That is the biggest negative in my opinion, followed secondly by being far from the Midwest targets, which again, means you're constantly chasing away from home. But, in terms of living in an area where you can get good bang for the buck, it's been my favorite of all the places I've lived for chasing, and you get a lot close enough to home in most years to satisfy most chasers.
ILLINOIS: I lived in southern Illinois for about five years, and there were a lot of perks to living here. Unfortunately the High Plains were a HUGE haul, but a lot of times, if I planned a trip well, this meant multiple days chasing back toward home. I had a couple trips where I could get three to four chase days on a single trip following a system from the high plains to the east. Rarely did I chase east of I-57, but when I did, it was a great excuse to visit Ohio friends upon the conclusion of the chase (a personal perk obviously). Still, the haul across Missouri kinda sucked, and western plains (my favorite area to chase) was often a day drive all on its own. Illinois was probably TOO far east for my liking, and had I had the luck in Iowa that I have had since returning to Colorado, I may gravitate more to speaking highly of this, but the hands I was dealt while living there had very few nearby setups, although the ones I did get were pretty big. But for those multi-day trips, it was nice to end them at home.
KANSAS: I got screwed in my three years there as I eluded to above. Not only because they were a couple of the quietest seasons on record, but I was somewhat handcuffed by the job and that often prevented me from venturing too far or too often from my DMA. When I took the job, I was wide-eyed and excited as hell. Centrally located in Wichita was a chaser's dream. I could theoretically chase just about every part of the plains leaving the morning of and the western plains always meant I'd be sleeping in my own bed after the chase. Unfortunately Kansas itself proved to be as dead as could be during my stint, while on the fortunate side of things was that so was the rest of the Alley. But you'd be hard-pressed to locate any better. Cost of living was good, Wichita was an awesome city, and again, six hours one way pretty much set you up anywhere you could want to target.
If money were no object, but I could only have ONE place, I would lean toward to being in the area I enjoy chasing the most. I'm blessed to say I'm back in that area. I think different regions offer different types of chasing, and certainly offer differing experiences. With some work, you could live just about anywhere you wanted and find both pros and cons. For me, I think waking up in an area you can leave in the morning and be home that night and get the most out of it is where you'd want to be. Is it the high plains, the central plains, the Midwest? I guess it's what you get out of it. The other thing to keep in mind is how things differ from year-to-year. Hell, just in the last two seeing the change from 2023's high plains insanity to 2024 splitting time between eastern Nebraska and Iowa. If you lived in Colorado in 2023, you probably had one of the better seasons of your career. But this year, it was a lot of hauling back and forth for me, and it became a grind much earlier in the season, then when June rolled around, it was crickets in Colorado.
I guess my point... don't get too tied up in trying to find the perfect place. There is so much variance year-to-year, hell, even month-to-month. I think without a doubt, being centrally located somewhere along the I-35 corridor from OKC to Omaha would offer the best, most advantageous basing as it does put you in the center of a lot of good places. I personally like Colorado and the variety it offers, and when she's on, boy is she on and it's nice to be here and so close to setups that don't always show themselves til the day of. But there's a lot to be said against it given you're literally on the very western fringes of the best chasing areas, meaning you're ALWAYS chasing away from home.
