Unless you've lived at high altitude, you are in for a dry experience. I frequently hosted people from coastal Asia including Southeast Asia where dry weather means it isn't raining. I had several surprised people when they experienced boogers, desiccated nasal mucus. Most were miserable and slept with wet wash cloths draped like a bandit.
Not to make this a science lesson but it is important to understand Relative Humidity to appreciate the difference in 70% relative humidity at sea level and a mile high. Nothing short of standing under water at 7000 foot altitude will approach the amount of water dissolved in hot, humid, sea level air. Conversely our potato chips are always crisp, something that will happen to all your membranes in the High Colorado Rockies.
Dryness is a combination of the colder temperatures that hold less water, altitude that holds less everything, strong UV radiation, and excepting the usual urban humidity in the densely populated metro areas, relative humidity is about 50% most of the time. Winter along the Front Range from Ft. Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs down to Pueblo, is genuinely mild, storms hit and are gone in two or three days. The Front Range summers will be tame compared to Florida’s, you'll notice the dry air.
I love the dryish climate of Colorado. National Jewish Health is a renowned CF center, and like half a dozen medical campuses that opened over a century back as TB sanatoriums. The clean dry air was considered curative and with thousands of the first electric blankets, patients slept outside. I don't know in truth if dry air is better than humid air for CF. I have far less respiratory infection and my FEV1 is fantastic.
The only concern I have is a sense my dry mucus really takes some work to thin it enough to cough up phlegm when I do have an infection. Compared to Florida, mold is rare as are little critters that don't survive harsh winters. As long as you leave all the cockroaches in Florida, they don't easily survive as well as fleas and such. We have some great allergens in Colorado, but so does everywhere. More dry plants like hay, wheat and golden rod are around.
NJH has expanded its facilities over the decades and have CF clinics at appropriate places like Denver Children’s Hospital. I have gone to NJH for a very long time but it isn’t the limit of available CF specialists in the region. For many NJH is forever tied to “the boy in the bubble”, a child allergic to everything, supposedly, and lived in a glorified hamster ball designed by NASA. Colorado isn’t fighting the Indian wars anymore either, both are history.
My assumption is in moving to Colorado for employment and CF treatment, Denver is where you are looking for treatment, whether it’s NJH or not. Denver lies in a basin called the Denver-Julesburg Basin or the DJ Basin that goes from Denver toward Julesburg in the North East corner of Colorado. The basin puts Denver proper in a low spot, warmer and a little more polluted. The mountains are a lot like the ocean in that they make Colorado’s weather. Typically winds blow from the North or West and they blow cold and hot respectively, over the turbulence of the Rockies many 14,000’+ mountains.
The good and bad news about that is thermal inversions we experience that chokes the Front Range during January-February each year. The air pollution gets caught under the high pressure ridge caused by winds shooting over Eastern Colorado at altitudes above 12,000 feet and then it is drawn to the ground and pulled back under itself trapping all the air pollution right over where everybody lives. Because we have the weather to smother us to death, pollution regulations in Colorado are uniquely stringent and enforced.
I’ve been in every conceivable climate for extended periods and Colorado has good air and good climate in relative terms. My home State of Wyoming may still have the cleanest air in the U.S. and it’s generally moving very fast into Colorado from the North.
If you like the high risk of hail and lightening, some do, I suggest Tornado alley a little north of Colorado Springs toward Denver. If you like groves of fruit trees, try the West Slope, it is Colorado’s most beautiful area in my opinion. Jobs are scarce in comparison to the East Slope or the Front Range of the Rockies.
Buy some Denver nasal cream when you get here. It saves me each winter. Scar tissue lines my nose from reconstruction and I’m always getting tiny sores along it if I don’t keep lubed during the winter. If YOU have any say in it, try to find a home that doesn’t use forced air furnaces. At least shoot for a newer one with a non-recirculating humidifier. Hot water radiators or electric, though expensive to operate, or sub floor hot water heating is going to disturb the air much less but without a humidifier, forced air furnaces take the nearly dry winter air and remove the last vestiges of water vapor. Humidity is like clothing in Colorado, it is low enough that if you want more, you put more into the air to accommodate your own comfort. You will discover that the same powerful sun that can burn an un-tanned person to a cinder in Florida is also in Colorado. Don’t walk out the door without some SPF30 sun block on your skin and really pile it on up in the mountains.
LL
recently my family and I relocated to Washington state, and I still miss my cf team in Florida. Dr. Rolfe is a awesome doc. He may seem a bit brisk at first, but just ask him all the questions you are curious about and hew ill explain everything thoughoughly with a good sense of humor and a smile on his face. Boy do I miss them! Just so you know it is normal, it takes a little while for your. Lungs to adjust to the wetness. You will cough more at first, but that is not a bad thing! It means all the gunk in your lungs that was just sitting down there in the dry climates are on the move! After a week or to... Depending on your severity, you will start feeling better and your mucus will be thinner and easier to cough out. I hope your move goes wonderfully! You will be in good hands!