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Comment by kulahan | Hacker News Reader

Both figuratively and literally, this experience was the tip of the iceberg. Terrifying. People might think I'm crazy, but I'm choosing my retirement location 100% based on resistance to climate change. Local water, too much humidity for massive fires, too cold for insane heatwaves... you get it.

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I've seen recommendations for locations near the Great Lakes. Upper peninsula of MI, for example. Plenty of water. A warming climate should actually make the winters there somewhat less harsh.

Wildfire smoke will be the big question there. It's started to be bad for a week or two a year in Minneapolis, and is only worse the closer you are to the boreal forest.

Wildfires only a problem until the overgrowth is burned off. When there's not enough to sustain a large spreading fire, they will stop happening.

True, but disingenuous, as "over" growth implies a normative cap, but climate change just is moving the cap lower. The ceiling is falling: more and more growth, in every biome, counts as overgrowth.

Eventually only desert remains viable, and everything above it, including arability, is locked away forever.

canada's forest is growing, not shrinking. the overgrowth will keep growing year over year

Climate change is defined by both wet and dry extremes.

Excess rainfall creates an explosion of brush that during the now annual drought turns to tinder.

Then come the floods because the roots were holding all the soil in place and the soil was managing water movement. What used to be an all year trickle becomes an occasional deatructive deluge.

There is a LOT of overgrowth. Expect a decade+ of fires, or an apocalyptic firestorm which burns everything to cinders. Neither is awesome.

And the failure of basic services like water and power.

Given it took FEMA ten days to get power restored to the super dome, how long will responses be when there are many simultaneous disasters of that size or bigger? With the current admin the answer could be “indefinite”

Depends on how much warming. Some areas of the UP are colder temperature wise, but because it stays below freezing most of the winter the humidity stays low and it doesn't feel so bad. Where as some lower areas in Michigan now regularly break the freezing line in winter and everything is always a sopping mess with cold high humidity and no snow to act as insulation for buildings.

Which places have you found? I'm in Canada and figured most of the places are going to suffer more rain falling in the next decades.

Not unexpectedly, follow real estate prices.

The average value of homes in safe parts of Canada has risen significantly. E.g. Vancouver is devastatingly expensive, while nearby Abbotsford and Richmond are floodplains and reclaimed marsh, respectively, and are cheap. Sometimes uninsurable, but cheap.

The market will price us all out of the safest places and indeed arguably already has. Expect housing values to continue to diverge. A dry hovel is superior to the mightiest of flooded manses, but a home in a dry, safe metropolis, with enough water for all?

Literally invaluable. It will be priced accordingly.

Personally, I'm aiming for Pittsburgh.

Great Lakes area is probably well positioned.

Everybody is saying that the Great Lakes region is a climate haven, but it's intensely vulnerable to both polar vortex events coming down from Canada and wet-bulb heat waves coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. The middle of America is flat; there is no natural barrier to stop a frigid or sweltering airmass from moving in. This has already happened multiple times within just the last few years.

In terms of death toll, a power outage during a severe deep freeze (with subzero temperatures and -50 wind chills) or a wet bulb event has a far greater lethality potential than wildfires. The most deadly wildfire in California history was the Camp fire that leveled the town of Paradise; it caused 85 deaths. The Oakland Hills firestorm of 1989, immortalized in SimCity and several made-for-TV movies, only caused 25 deaths. By contrast, the 1995 Chicago heat wave caused 740 fatalities, and even the 2024 polar vortex event that barely made headlines killed more people (90) than the Camp Fire.

(Also note the low absolute numbers of even very severe, headline-grabbing natural disasters in developed countries. And that good construction can mitigate almost all of them. You are probably better off, in strict actuarial terms, by settling in a place where you can make a lot of money and then using it to prepare your home for disaster than by settling in a place that is cheaper but where you can't afford the latest building technology.)

I think they have their fair share of snow storms during the winter because of the vortex coming from the West. The vortex goes down from Alaska because the mountains block it, and then it turns east and goes straight to the lake area.

I live in Montreal, but sometimes I see bitter weathers in Toronto during the winter. Ofc we have our share of pain, but I'm fine with snow -- raining is a huge problem in recent years -- I'm installing a French Drain right now, and hopefully it offers enough protection. However, my house is sitting on top of clay, so that could be a big issue.

Snow can be annoying but is rarely catastrophic.

Somewhat more concerning is that tornado frequency is increasing at a ferocious rate, though most are relatively minor (EF-0 / EF-1).

The total for 2026 to date is 207 ground tracks (as of 27 Aug 2026). The previous full year record was 142, and the historical average (again full-year) is closer to 50.

This has knock-on effects to insurance as well as raising home and landscaping repair (downed trees, etc.).

<https://chicago.suntimes.com/environment/2026/08/27/200-torn...>

Flash-flooding is also an increasing concern, though unlike Nepal, water channels tend to be largely flat. Urban creeks, local rivers, retention ponds, and low-lying locations (underpasses, local low spots) may experience flooding, though generally flow strength is low. Basement flooding is the most likely risk.

I have spoken to quite a few real estate agents in Sudbury who mentioned folks are buying property there as a hedge against climate change.

Cities in the tropics at high altitude far from the sea like Bogotá, Medellín, maybe even Mexico City.

Maybe some moderately increased risk of extreme rainfall causing localised flooding, mudslides etc, but Bogotá in particular has an incredibly mild climate year round, and you're at 2600m so you aren't too worried about sea level risk.

As far as I'm aware basically no risk from hurricanes, tornados or anything like that. Biggest risk is earthquakes which is nothing to do with climate change and can be mitigated.

In fact Bogotá is a bit chilly so might be nice if it was slightly warmer.

For some reason people assume that climate change means you need to move closer to the poles, but moving to higher elevation is much better

Yeah but then you have drug cartels and corresponding violence, kidnappings etc. Questionable healthcare, nothing social. Its nice for a short visit for some, but long term? You wanna live behind a fancy fence?

Plus its malaric jungle, so mosquitos can kill you day(dengue ones) and night.

Thats not a definition of move to a better place by any means, unless you come from say Bangladesh.

Sea levels haven't changed at Martha's Vineyard. I'd recommend that. Obama moved there in his retirement.

Honestly there is no safe haven while humans over-consume continue to waste in the chase of excess. We have seen in the last few years all the supposed climate safe areas get hit hard.

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/09/nx-s1-5137024/climate-haven-h...

birth rates are falling off the cliff in all developed nations, most are below replacement rate already

Most developing nations are below too now!

Pro tip for people moving north; don't buy land in the valleys around Mt. Rainier. This type of flood (also known as a lahar) has occurred there many times. The mudflows reached the harbor of Tacoma in the past. [0] I expect we'll see at least one new one in our lifetime, as the glaciers have been greatly affected by rising temperatures.

[0] https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/mt-rainier-lahar-hazard-ma...

Do you have a source about the Nepalese flood being a Lahar? I've only read that it was caused due to the glacier collapse, which seems like a different thing

I can't access the OP article at the moment, but there's a diagram of the the chain of events that caused the disaster here [1].

I believe Lahars are specifically volcanic, this would be better described as a combination flood and landslide at the same time.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c6y8mjmnpxv0t?post=asset%3Ac6b...

Thanks, I see that Lahars are technically associated with volcanoes as another comment noted. They have a variety of causes of which glacial collapse is one. [0] The term jökulhlaup describes a flood originating from a glacier, for example draining of a glacial lake. [1] It now seems the Nepali flood was triggered by a landslide onto a glacier.

As a practical matter the effects are pretty similar. Rainier has had lahars and jökulhlaups in the past.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahar

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6kulhlaup

A bit off topic about the word "lahar", we Indonesians use that word to mean "lava", and we use "lahar dingin" (lit: cold lava) to mean volcanic mudflow.

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