So I visited the south to scout retirement areas: i) Florida Atlantic side, ii) Savannah Georgia, iii) Montgomery AL and iv) New Orleans/Mobile.
So from this is I take that part of your criteria is that you have a great desire to live in an area where you have considerable hurricane risk. Well, not so much Montgomery, I guess.
Seriously, I am a little puzzled about the list. These are mostly large cities (well, relatively large) and then there is Montgomery, which is not. For an inland city in Alabama I would probably go for Birmingham (on the other hand, I spent several weeks there years ago so maybe not).
About humidity. I have lived in humidity my entire life (Texas). No, I didn't get used to it. I do tolerate it, since I do still live here. There are things that I don't go in Texas due to humidity that I can do in another locations (like be outside in the middle of the day).
This isn't hard to understand though. The trade off is, ultimately, money versus climate. You live in California. As you surely know, there are areas of California that have lovely weather. I would absolutely love that weather. But, I do not wish to pay for it.
So -- I live in Texas. I trade the lower housing costs for the high humidity. Is it worth it? Not by itself. If all of my family and friends suddenly moved out of Texas the low cost of living wouldn't keep me here. But, they are here.
It sounds like you don't have family/friends in your choices. In that case, I am not sure that I would want to move somewhere with weather that I didn't live.
I would suggest that when you ultimately pick a locale that you like you try renting for awhile before you buy a house. I am actually not joking about hurricane risk. I lived in the Houston area for over 30 years and I don't miss not having to worry about hurricanes any more. Hurricanes come with lots of financial risks that many people don't think about. Insurance is often much higher in hurricane areas, sometime prohibitively higher. Hurricanes can cause all kinds of damage, not just to your personal home but to the overall infrastructure. All of this is leaving side the potential risk to your health and survival. Even if you don't have severe damage from a hurricane it can still cost you money. One time that we were 50 miles away from any of the water from a hurricane the damage to the trees and shrubbery at our house cost $9000 to repair (and making an insurance claim would not have been wise due to our high deductible and what it would have done to our premiums). The point is that many "low cost" places have costs in other ways that you may not realize exist.