Well, I guess you could find somewhere in the lower 48 states that has bad weather on any given day but there's a wide swathe of territory in the south that has remarkably fine weather for most of the year. That is why we have so many airports left over from when we were training aircrew for the Second World War in Florida, for instance. What all of that has to do with pilot ability though... no idea.
One comment here makes a lot of sense to me, that idea of setting the bar a bit low. Of course we are not all potential astronauts or test pilots, people with exceptional ability but you can read some accident reports where you have to wonder how that fellow ever got a job in the first place with such an obvious lack of aptitude. There perhaps the bar was set a bit too low, yes.
I remember when the USA went to requiring an ATP instead of a Commercial license for Part 135 operations because of a series of really stupid accidents. One that got everyone's attention was a Navajo pilot who lost an engine on departure off a nice, long runway, when all he had to do was cut both throttles and land on the runway straight ahead. Instead he let the speed decay until it went below Vmc, when he crashed. Of course a properly trained Commercial pilot should be able to handle this situation, when this fellow couldn't for some reason. Anyway, suddenly a Commercial ticket was no longer good enough and we all had to have ATPs to fly for the regionals.
Our wonderful capitalist system then sprang into action in the way it is designed to, supplying a need, when it ran many guys through schools that got them their ATPs as quickly and cheaply as possible. Most of these guys were no better pilots than before; all we did there was to degrade the average skill of an ATP holder (in my opinion). Possible proof of that can be to read of the same sort of accidents as before, just that now the crew hold ATPs where once they would have held Commercial/IFR tickets.
I remember my first (and last) Part 135 job in the States, for a little outfit called Atlantis Airlines, one of the first to start up after de-regulation. I had to pay for 50% of the cost of my uniform (made to look just like a Delta uniform) and I made a princely $800 per month before taxes as a Twin Otter First Officer. Well, that was in 1979-80 in the Carolinas! I remember a friend from Colgan who stopped by looking for a job with us, so I guess he was on about the same, flying a Beech 99 as an FO. He had just been told that his crew base was changing next Friday so that he would have all weekend to pack up and move, to sort out his own place so that he could be back on the program on Monday.
We had worked together for Colgan as flight instructors, when he went onto their 135 operation. I had seen enough of Colgan and I went with Atlantis instead. After a year there I got the boot, went to Florida to fly air taxi for a year and get my P1 XC hours up for my ATP, got a job in Africa on the back of that and never looked back. Part 135 was a dog's life in 1980 and it reads as though nothing much has changed. Well, perhaps it has got worse, when that is a change, yes...