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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Is there any place on earth where the weather isn't potentially dangerious at some time?

Very safe in most of Europe. In the UK the only weather that kills people is the cold (pensioners who can't afford heating; I wouldn't say it's exactly natural causes, but it's in the vicinity) and floods, which occasionally kill single digits of people.

There are basically no earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wildfire, etc. I would imagine a lot of places are like that.

I live in southern Ontario which is mostly like this too. There is occasional flooding but minor compared to other places, and occasional major snowstorms, but the worst natural disaster I can recall in a half century here was an “ice storm” that caused damage that was quite frankly small potatoes compared to hurricanes and earthquakes.

Living next to the Great Lakes also means that regardless of what happens with droughts, we have a supply of fresh water that is virtually limitless. I have to wonder whether the region will start to become more popular with climate refugees. Might Chicago become more of a destination, for example?

I live in Chicago. I grew up in Southern California (Ventura County). Huge wildfire in fall of '93 started in my neighborhood. Then a few months later in '94, got to "ride" the Northridge earthquake. I would love to move back to CA, but haven't because of natural disaster risk. I still have family that lives there, though, and I enjoy going back when I can. The Great Lakes region theoretically is poised to be a /relatively/ safer place in the future as a "climate refuge", all things considered. And the huge amount of fresh water is nice... except... the more I learn about PFAS in the water, the more I realize... no place is perfect. (And if it truly was perfect, I'd probably not be able to afford to live there.) So... I choose snow, cold, and tornado risk over wildfire and earthquakes. Out of all the risks, wildfire risk seems the scariest (okay, maybe second to flooding). Everyone gets to (and has to) choose which risks they're willing to live with.

I think the two biggest natural disaster risks around Chicago are tornados and algal blooms. It's rare anyone thinks about the second one, but imagine having no water from faucets for an extended period.

Also in the great lakes region. From reading and researching this topic I feel like Californians vastly overestimate the risk of blizzards and tornados while discounting wildfire and earthquakes.

I feel like any natural disaster here has plenty of warning, which massively reduces the actual risk me and my family assuming I take the warning seriously. Unfortunately there is absolutely no warning for earthquakes and relatively little warning for wildfires (better than earthquakes, but still not as good as tornados or winter storms).

> Very safe in most of Europe.

Fires in the Mediterranean region are a serious thing. I got evacuated once from our family house once: flames 20 meters high near the house.

Yeah, central Europe, probably also Eastern, just stay out of River banks or build with sufficient foundations, debris-catchers, and nothing vulnerable below the first above-ground floor. Yes, this includes making sure the interior walls down there are fine from soaking 24 hours. And no electricity for a week after that.

The reason being that you want to rely on your home after such a disaster, if you get hit.

Yes, Eastern Europe is very safe. For example, Ukraine had very few natural disasters and floods over the decades. Most disasters were man-made, such as famine, Chornobyl and war. If Nature doesn't get you, humans will...

Floods do a lot of damage. Some areas, esp around the M5, are becoming uninsurable. Flash flooding is increasing and the UK doesn't have the infrastructure to deal with it. There's also the issue of food security, because climate change is very obviously affecting crop yields.

If the AMOC flips the UK and Europe will have a completely different, far less hospitable landscape.

Meanwhile in the Med increasing temps are making extreme flash floods much more likely (Valencia, for example) and fires are becoming more common in drier areas, like Greece.

Unless you build in a flood zone (europe has those too BTW) most of the US is not subject to those things.

I hear about the heat in Spain/France/Italy causing a lot of deaths of elderly people.

Yes there are many. One of the strategies for dealing with the upcoming climate catastrophe has to be to do a sober assessment of its impact and instrument societies to relocate quickly. There is simply no point in trying to rebuild in areas that will be constantly destroyed by natural disasters on a regular cadence.

I can't think of any. Some are less than other but there is always something. Lightning is a common one

I’ve been to places in the Phillipines where everyone expects their house be destroyed and rebuilt, after typhoons, at least 20 times in their lifetimes.

[edit: typos]

UK is pretty benign. We occasionally get some mild "extremes" (for us) that people are not prepared for, but nothing major.

Let's hope it lasts: https://www.ft.com/content/7711109e-0338-43ad-aada-853f058a2...

Well given that intense heat wave that hit the UK a couple summers ago where the country went from green to brown from space, I’d worry about forest fires

There aren't many forests, and those left aren't big.

There are large parks, and much of London is leafy. The limiting factor is wind. So far it's extremely unusual in the UK to have very dry conditions with strong winds, so fires are much less likely to spread.

The mid-Atlantic US is quite mild in all dimensions of weather. It’s hot in the summer but not at a level where people keep keeling over. It’s sometimes a bit cold in the winter but nothing too bad. Hurricanes are greatly moderated if they make it that far. Thunderstorms don’t build up that much. Tornadoes happen occasionally but never big ones.

The Pacific Northwest is pretty mild. But there are the volcanoes!

Don't forget about the Cascadia subduction zone! Could be bad for the area...

https://www.pnsn.org/outreach/earthquakesources/csz

Windstorms.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/the-la...

The Inauguration Day Windstorm was one of the few times I've seen almost everything shut down.

Earthquakes - I never went through anything major, but when you get the queasy feeling in your stomach and realize that it's the building slowly swaying side to side - that can be unsettling.

The other quake occurred just after the plane I was in had taken off from SeaTac. Pilot then announced that Seattle had just experienced a minor earthquake, people were reaching for the in-seat phones to call and check on their loved ones.

https://firststreet.org/ will report climate risk, for a given address. I live in a part of the Bay Area with the following risk factor profile:

1/10 Flood. 1/10 Fire. 1/10 Wind. 7/10 Air. 3/10 Heat.

Seems manageable. Of course, earthquakes are not climate-related.

The odds of the UK experiencing 40°c heat in the next 50 years were put at 0.02% a few years ago. It happened the following year.

Those stats are meaningless. 1/10 just means unlikely but the dice could still land that way.

I don't know, seems incomplete even for climate stuff. It shows some front range locations in CO as having no real risks, but there's no category for hail, which is a regular and very serious climate and weather related problem.

Other than relatively rare ice storms, central KY always seemed to not have super crazy weather.

You mean like, Wisconsin?

Plenty of tornados, cold, or lightning there.

No, Wisconsin doesn't get a lot of tornados. "Lightning" is pretty funny though.

Wisconsin gets plenty of severe weather. Minnesota and Wisconsin also get brutally cold in the winters. The cold weather patterns tends to dip down over Minnesota then get pushed back north by Lake Michigan.

Map of tornado between 1950 and 2021: https://databayou.com/states/tornadoes.html

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