Well, kind of. The latest issue of the the St. Louis Fed's National Economic Trends includes an article by Ruben Hernandez-Murillo that discusses the relationship between skill levels (as measured by educational attainment) and the growth of a metropolitan area. It turns out that an educated population is associated with higher population and employment growth in "Snow Belt" cities, but not in "Sun Belt" cities.

What's up with that? Hernadez-Murillo offers a couple of explanations. A clue to one explanation was suggested long ago by Montesquieu:

The heat of the climate can be so excessive that the body there will be absolutely without strength. So, prostration will pass even to the spirit; no curiosity, no noble enterprise, no generous sentiment; inclinations will all be passive there; laziness there will be happiness...

People are ... more vigorous in cold climates.

In other words, good weather makes people lazy, skilled and industrious workers do not like to be surrounded by lazy people, so skilled workers tend to congregate where the climate is lousy.

Hernandez-Murillo throws some water on the explanation, citing work by Edward Glaeser and Albert Saiz (caution: some math required) that finds

... skilled cities are growing because they are becoming more economically productive (relative to less skilled cities), not because these cities are becoming more attractive places to live.

It's not entirely clear why these "productive externalities" show up in bad-weather cities rather than good-weather cities, but the Glaeser-Saiz research suggests that the key may be the relatively greater influence of these externalities in cities that are otherwise declining, and not the weather per se.

... we find evidence suggesting that the skills-city growth connection occurs mainly in declining areas and occurs in large part because skilled cities are better at adapting to economic shocks... skills appear to permit adaptation.

Note: I came upon the Montesquieu passage in a paper titled "Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth" by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. It's long, but highly recommended if you ae not quite satisfied with the story that growth just arrives like manna from heaven.