Nope, I’m in Wyoming; the only state with fewer people per square mile than here is Alaska.
Wasn’t meant as a criticism; merely an observation (as those states had previously been mentioned as possible “safe zones”).
I have former colleagues who retired and have lived just north of Tampa for the last 15 years. They just finished massive rehab on their home from a previous hurricane, and now they are getting beat up again. Eventually, many of those areas will first become uninsurable and then unlivable.
Nobody goes there, it’s too crowded.
San Carlos Island is little piece of land between the Town of Fort Myers Beach (Estero Island) and the mainland. The east half of the island was mostly mobile homes on 40-foot wide lots a few feet above sea level and Ian wiped ALL of them off the map. Now we have this absurd situation where the new mobile homes are being placed in the old lots but their floors are 9-12 feet in the air. This is because when the repairs or work you are doing on the property exceed 50% of the value of the property, you have to bring it up to code. And that means meeting federal FEMA flood regulations.
So when I’m on the phone or sitting in the lobby of the office speaking to these people crying about how stupid it is to have a mobile home on an open rack, all I can think is, “Yeah, it’s stupid. It’s stupid THAT YOU STILL WANT TO LIVE THERE.” Ian destroyed a lot of homes and trailer parks that were a mess but allowed to continue because they were grandfathered in. But now that they got totally wiped out, a lot of those parks and homes must come up to code where possible. But even so, we are letting a lot of people build back what they had because, you know, Florida.
Florida should still be pretty nice if you live on a house boat. Just drive it up the coast to nicer weather on occasion.
I’ve met a lot of humanity and came to the same conclusion.
Have you ever been involved with moving a houseboat? They don’t move easy, and they don’t move fast.
Are they even able to go out onto the ocean? I mean, I guess they can try but is it a good idea? Seems puttering around the harbor is about the best they can hope for.
It isn’t fast, easy or cheap: How Do You Transport A Houseboat? - Just Houseboats
My houseboat will be an unsinkable, oceangoing houseboat. It’ll be slow, but if the National Weather Service is still a thing, I can get advanced warning.
You might be able to get a boat that has a bedroom and a microwave,but outracing a hurricane?
I think your best bet would be a houseboat which is located at least 500 miles away. Or a speedboat.
It also has no reliable infrastructure. You get what you pay for.
Yeah, I think ‘Houseboat’ is fairly euphemistic.
I’d suggest the upper midwest - IL/IN/MI/MN/WI/OH - are pretty safe. Sure, there is an occasional tornado, and extreme winter storm, and regular flooding around the rivers, but nothing like the predictability, frequency, and magnitude of SE hurricanes, and W earthquakes/wildfires.
After the 1989 Lome Prieta earthquake near San Francisco (the one that disrupted the World Series), many SF-based companies realized the risk of having their nascent data centers so close to potential disaster. They looked around for a nearby place with a low risk of having their data, essentially the life blood of a company, particularly financial services companies, affected by natural disasters. Firms in the Bay Area started setting-up shop outside Sacramento - low/no risks of earthquake, flood (east of the city at least), hurricane, tornado, blizzard, hail, and locusts. There is a street in the neighborhood where my office is located called Data Drive - because of the number of data centers that (once) existed there. From there, many other companies and businesses moved in. Big financial firms kept their headquarters in the SF Bay Area, but the data was sent offsite.
Anyway, one way to assess risks is to see what kinds of businesses are locating where. I would think data centers, and cloud-computing hosting centers are located in some of the most stable, least risky areas.
One question I have - in California, home insurance companies have been cancelling policies for properties in high-risk fire areas, and some have stopped selling policies to people in low risk fire areas, and others have left the market altogether. How is the home/property insurance situation for these communities along the waterfront in Florida - are people going uninsured? Are insurance companies still selling policies in these areas?
According to John McPhee, Interstate 80 in Wyoming has been closed by blowing snow every month of the year save August. Not necessarily an indicator of natural disaster, but it’s clear that life in Laramie is not without its challenges.
I used to think we were complaining about the weather in Laramie just to prevent people from moving there. Then several years ago someone counted the severe weather events for every county in the US. It turns out that Laramie does indeed have the worst weather in the US.