THE RISKIEST Places to Live in the US as Our Climate Changes | Weathered: Earth's Extremes 

🌊Follow Maiya over to the PBS App to watch the rest of Weathered: Earth's Extremes for free RIGHT NOW on your smart TV, phone, tablet or streaming device: to.pbs.org/PBSAppWeathered And if you’re outside of the US, you can also watch the series here: to.pbs.org/PBSorgWeathered

Absolutely. I was watching Nova & Nature with my Dad at the age of 3. Still watching PBS at the age of 43.

You guys should create a state-by-state video series addressing the impacts of climate change throughout the US 🇺🇸

Im glad he talked about impervious surfaces. All of our asphalt and concrete is causing so much damage to the environment and much more risk, particularly to flooding. We have the ability to engineer things that dont use these materials and techniques. We need to be open to change and innovation. Thats what once made America great. We have to stop trying to go back in time, or preserve things that dont make sense.

If you get hit by 2 hurricanes in a week... you're put on "the list"

Such an inconvenient truth lol 😂. My man Gore told all of yall this in the 90s early 2000's no one wanted to listen but everyone wants to be a victim now

This was amazing. More Maiya May, and thank you for showcasing the work of Marshall Shephard!

I wish they had emphasized the importance of that last shot, which was Monteplier, the capitol of Vermont. I live in Vermont, and this state has been frequently claimed to be a "safe haven for climate change", which is incredibly dangerous and wrong. I did move here for many reasons, the primary being climate change, but I knew from the beginning that did not mean it was safe from climate events. Last year Montpelier(and surrounding towns) suffered from a catastrophic flooding event which damaged and destroyed many homes and businesses and infrastructure, then this year, on the anniversary of the exact day last year, we got flooded again, not as bad, but still bad. This is the reality of what we're facing, that there is no such thing as a "climate haven", all we have are better areas and regions to endure climate collapse, I believe Vermont is one of the best, but that doesn't mean we won't suffer from these events any less. Filling people's heads with the notion of climate safe havens is giving them false hope that they can live normal lives as they always have, when the reality is that everyone everywhere will have to adapt to the changing climate.

I thought I was safe in Asheville NC but oh boy I was wrong...

Pbs is our national treasure

Just wanted to say, as a career environmental educator I really appreciate that you put this show out there Maiya. The world needs this kind of accessible and clear educational information. Thanks!

I love Weathered! It would also be awesome to see the safest, or at least the least risky places to live!

That is extremely grim seeing Bexar County (eg where San Antonio, Tx is) get so much darker on that graph from 2023 to 2053. Our summer of 2023 shattered the previous record with 75 days of 100+ here. Until 1998 the record was 33 days of 100+ in 1948 and the record through 2022 was 59 days (had 58 in 2022 BTW). So to see our average summers are going to start being around 100 days of 100+ by 2053 just looks like a nightmare. The Texas electric grid barely survived Summer 2023.

Remember this is for the next 80 years, a doubling of sea level rise will happen multiple times during that time and going forward and this is the best it's going to be now for possibly the next 2000 years.

I live in the desert southwest and we've been experiencing - yep - record heat for the month of October, so far...we're talking 10 to 14 degrees *above* what we should be for this time of year. So, yeah, we're still in "triple digit" temps. We _are_ supposed to _finally_ get a break next week, but when one lives in one of the hottest parts of the country, losing even a few weeks of what would normally be our "cool" period for the year is a lot because, yes, even those of us "desert rats/lizards" get tired of the heat!

I expected to find a link to the maps here. All the links are just ads for the series! The maps are not even named so I can search for them! Show your references.

Urban planning must include natural space. Keep s9me of that land uncovered, stop lining old creek and river ways with solid concrete. I like how here in Santa Clara County they finally did some forward planning along the Guadalupe river through San Jose by building in tiers of permeable area along side the normal reviver course. As it rises in winter storms it can spread out and absorb water into our groundwater system to also keep the valley from subsiding. Also more parks with tree and natural grass and plants for insect and animal life and mulch needed cooling shade! More please!!

*Awesome Video, @MaiyaMay , PBS should be proud to have you as a presenter*

WHY is Hawaii most always left out of these reports???

I’m retired in Los Angeles County. At least it’s in a state that recognizes climate change and is making preparations. And so am I. Just last night I was surfing the web for AC technology for those 125 degree days. Current tech is severely stressed once temperatures go over 100. Nothing popped. Move? “Better the devil you know”. I’ve already bolted the house to its foundation, etc, and among other things am currently planning high wind retrofits using the Florida building code (mostly DIY - too expensive otherwise). I expect convective storms eventually. Rain/flooding, wind, hail, lightning, possibly blown embers.

I moved out of L. A. 20 years ago. In those days, it was rare to have 100+ degree weather, this summer they had so many days, I lost count...even in October which was unheard of back then.

You are talking about CONTINENTAL United States only. Why's that? What about Hawaii? Puerto Rico? Guam?

I learned that there was a large-scale power outage due to the recent hurricane. I also know that it suddenly got hot in California, and power shortages caused power outages. I heard that one of the causes was an over-reliance on solar power. I'm commenting from Japan, but I used to be in a position to teach about reducing CO2 emissions, so the product in the photo is a passive cooling device that uses cool air in the morning and evening to cool homes. Heat accumulates inside the house, so if you exhaust it with wind every day, you can significantly reduce your electricity bill from air conditioning. In Japan, there is always the possibility of long-term power outages due to earthquakes, so we developed this type of device, and I think it will be necessary in America in the future as well. It has also been reported that heat-related disorders can have after-effects.

It's hard to feel bad for Florida man. This has been obvious for decades.

Hey @PBS Please make your app worldwide available. Greets from Germany.

Aside from Arizona and California, there is actually a county in Texas that had 100 100 degree days in 2023. Starr County is the first of likely many readings of this type in the future.

Can we get a link to the map?

What about those of us in Alaska or Hawaii? Or for that matter, the American territories? It’s frustrating to see so many of these videos and maps focus only on the continental US.

Predicted the future, those dark purple areas in Florida completely lost power and still don't have it back!

Thank you so much for diffusing this vital information. And thanks for lowering the volume of the background music! Much better now :-)

I'm in southern NM. Our summer temps were above normal for longer because we didn't get our usual rainy season monsoon weather to cool things off. Now we're in our dry season with less than 4 inches total rain so far. There's no way we'll reach our average yearly total of 8 to 9 inches.

I’ve been increasingly worried about the future for my boys. We live on the outskirts of Memphis. If I had been more attentive about our climate’s trajectory and had not procrastinated telling myself that I would take measures to prepare my family for the future and move them further north, then I wouldn’t be so overcome with incredible guilt and regret and scrambling in my older years to save up enough to provide my family with a future absent of stress and anxiety and an abundance of worry. My greatest hope is that our younger generations will learn from our mistakes and take the necessary measures to mitigate and minimize the consequences of our selfish and destructive actions.

I Live in the suburbs of Atlanta... this really hits home!! So interesting!

The entire South!

The maps shown above about the days above 100 and 125 degrees were heat index not temperature.

Lets stop cutting down all the trees! And buildimg cement to hold the heat!

Carl Sagan’s address to congress in 1985 is the only source of information that I have seen change a climate denier’s mind.

Loving Central New York state! ❤

America has by far the best instrumental data, and it shows overall the South East cooled in the last 120 years. Though that sentence doesn't do justice to the climate's variability. Data from NOAA (2021) shows uneven warming in the twentieth century focused on the South East through until it peaks in the 1930s. Where it should be noted the highest average maxima temperature records remain to this day. Some areas of the West US showed negligible warming. There then followed a general continent-wide cooling into the 1970s. Then the West began to warm, but the South East continued to cool, so that by the end of the century some SE areas were cooler than they had been a century before. This pattern of uneven warming continues up to the present day.

THE RISKIEST Places are anywhere in the U.S. and anywhere in the world. A hurricane hit Florida, but the mid Eastern states were the most affected.

I was really hoping they would talk about why Los Angeles county is extremely risky. Not that I don't agree with them, but what makes it risky. The droughts, it's density of population, the demographics of the population?

How is it that Mississippi consistently gets left out of lists we are on? It's juat as bleak for us here as for our neighbors east and west of this mysterious land mass.

These rising temps are a serious concern... And on top of the unbearable heat, we are seeing more and more natural disasters happening around the world... It validates that a shift in how we build our homes and structures is becoming more needed than ever before. Rather than traditional styles of building, it would be wise that we begin building homes that are more resilient against these extreme weather events.

Cities should start retrofitting the sidewalks, parking lots, and other appropriate surfaces with pervious concrete to help mitigate the flood risks.

Our country is so Broken. People struggle to ever buy a house, but if a storm destroys your house, our country is totally unable to deal with that. Why should people keep investing in this when our system is completely broken & fails to deal with these things? (This is someone's entire life's investments we are talking about..) How can our country not see how important it is to invest into it's own people? Investing Into the quality of life within Our country, within the poor communities, our country has shown it is completely unable to adapt & adjust in certain ways. Ways that could allow certain things to start to balance out & maybe finally get the chance to start & thrive. Where they prioritize the quality of living standards for it's own citizens. Instead of us having a thriving functional system, America has now become completely detached from reality. They put profit above everything, they chase ever increasing growth above everything else, no matter if that means that our system falls apart.. Our system falls apart because that business model is unrealistic, not possible & a complex system cannot flourish under those circumstances. We could eventually see mass homelessness or widespread poverty, mass Renter's with little to no actual home owners. We will see empty store fronts and those empty places will be contrasted by the only businesses left that are owned & ran by the few who remained wealthy, but then we also have the large companies, as well as the corporations.. We have forgotten what the soul of America is made up of... It comes from a thriving multilevel system.. where even the lower income brackets could have had obtainable & comfortable living options.. if the lower income level citizens cannot at least exist comfortably in their own way, the system that we know of will eventually breakdown..

Alaska and Hawaii?

Well Done!!

Is there such a map for Canada?!? Professor-Marty.

Beware of metro Phoenix- way too much concrete and asphalt and still “growing”.

Is that Haystack Rock & the Needles in the background? Sure isn't Atlanta. Girl, you get around! [jealous]

I feel like North America is moving to a monsoon style climate. Dry all year then all the precipitation at once.

FEMA and the American Red Cross conducted a 5 year joint survey on Americans and preparedness and there results came out in August 2015, stating two major statistics that at the time over 60%, now 55%, of Americans do not prepare for natural disasters in any significant shape or form even though over 80%, now 95%, of American counties get hit by one or more than one natural disaster per year. The second major statistic was for every $1 spent on preparedness planning, products, or both you will save somewhere between $4-$16 in damages and recovery fees, compared to someone who doesn't prepare at all. To include those who prepare, compared to those who do not, will recover 4-5 times faster. Now those statics where all before the pandemic, so now if you include inflation its more like for every $1 spent in preparedness planning, products, or both you will save yourself somewhere between $8-$32 or more in damages and recovery fees. During Hurricane Harvey in southern Texas a husband and father took a chance in preparedness by purchasing an Aqua Dam for $8300 and all his friends, family members, and neighbors made fun of him until after the disaster had passed and they discovered his was the only home not majorly damaged by Hurricane Harvey. The husband stated he spent $8300 on the product and it saved him over $150K in damages and recovery fees, that's a 95% savings rate. It always pays to be prepared. The more prepared you are the better off you will be in the long run, as long as you survive the initial disaster. This is a prime example of why more people need to get more prepared and think about "Emergency Preparedness Management" for both your home and vehicles. I am a RU-vidr under my Full-Name with the same profile picture as this post with 47 videos covering 27 different category topic subjects sharing my personal knowledge and experiences with others to help others improve their overall adult lives. I've got videos on building yourself a high quality 24-72 Hour Survival Bug Out Bags, Home and Vehicle Preparedness and Readiness advice videos, several Financial Literacy advice videos, a dozen Cooking Creation Recipes videos, and more!

Informative information packaged in a great way to educate. Congratulations on the show! 👏🏾

I'll be settling down for the duration in Maine next spring/summer. I can tolerate winter cold much better than the extreme summer time temperatures of the south, and being retired, I even have the option of traveling south for a couple months during the Maine winter anyway. I'll definitely be considering flood hazard when I buy a place up there because precipitation is increasing in the north.

Thank you

The UN's IPCC AR6 report, chapter 11 'Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate' summarises the fact that certain severe weather events cannot be detected as increasing, nor attributed to human caused climate change: Pages 1761 - 1765, Table 11.A.2 Synthesis table summarising assessments Heavy Precipitation: 24 out of 45 global regions low confidence in observed trend (12 medium confidence), 43 out of 45 low confidence in human attribution. Agricultural Drought: 31 out of 45 global regions low confidence in observed trend (14 medium confidence. No high confidence assessment). 42 out 45 low confidence in human attribution (3 medium, no high confidence). Ecological Drought as above. Hydrological Drought: 38 out of 45 global regions low confidence in observed trend. 43 out 45 low confidence in human attribution (2 medium confidence, no high confidence). So the IPCC are saying we didn't cause droughts and we didn't make it rain. How surprising! There is no objective observational evidence that we are living in a global climate crisis.

In the meantime, after Helene and Milton. Governor DeSantis has once again declared anthropological climate change is not a thing. And if I understand correctly, bringing up climate change is no longer allowed in official documents in Florida.

I love these and love everything about them!! Wish our trajectory was different :(

Looks like this model didn't identify Eastern Tennessee and West North Carolina as a risk as we found with Helene.

I would like to see the maps include Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean islands. And, perhaps, similar shows presenting the challenges for different parts of the world. This is a global issue, that reaches far beyond the continental U.S.

@1:48 I see Cannon beach OR behind you.

I feel so left out…of this video. I live in Lahaina

No kidding if you want to live in a peninsula state you're very vulnerable. But, thats always been true.

I wish it was global cooling. I hate warm weather and unfortunately I also live in Atlanta.

Imagine if the money spent on wars is steered towards saving our own people from these challenges

Maiya is great. I hope her show does well.

Yay for “irrespective”!

Gonna have to risk it and move to Atlanta.

audio mix needs more compression guys

Scary stuff, but necessary. I was around for Al Gore (was in my 20s) when he was talking about this very topic. I have always taken it seriously. Now, I hope America wakes ups (in light of all the extreme weather events we’ve seen across the country).

I appreciate that you guys didn't sugarcoat this one with hopium at the end. We need to begin accepting the irreparable consequences we've sown - we are not changing course, and we are not going back to climate stability. Young folks like myself are tired of hearing that "but we COULD save the planet!" That's a nice fantasy for a perfect world without greed or corruption.

Haha! You’re in the ATL! I did a video shoot right on that bridge in college! Love your show even more now!

Carl Sagan warned the world of climate change in front of congress decades ago, people didn't listen. Keep in mind though, for scale purposes on this chart, Los Angeles county has a larger population than 42 states so it's based on the number of people effected.

i would argue that communities on the 98th maridian are at risk as well given they are right at the transiton point where trees become plains.

I want to emphasize that extreme weather events also tear at the living planet. A monster storm like Helene, dropped 80,000,000,000,000 gallons of water on the US south in that water scoured away not only just property but entire town if the structure farm topsoil and great chunks of landscape. And it is our natural landscape that is central to regional climate because that landscape manages hydrology and temperature. Life on this planet has been shaping climate for 3 billion years. And when you rip it off the surface of the Earth, you are ripping away the climate we knew.

When the Universe has shown us amd teach us so many lessons in so many ways

Dekalb county, we’re @ high risk 😪

i see one yellow spot. is that utah? is that the mormon church?

Why do so many young people these days pronounce extreme as exshtreme ?

Fantastic breakdown ❤ This is hard news but so necessary

I love how the arrow is almost pointing to where I live 😅😭

💖PBS, thankyou.

PBS is a safe haven for knowledge, you could never get this honest political-free facts from any other. PBS is always my go to for real news. not many others have the this high level of credibility (AKA Fox news)

I'd say northern Poland is such a safe haven, but it's not in the U.S. However, we do need immigrants for demographic reasons.

All the places people have piled into the last few years have aways been the most at risk for warming temps. It is true that the South and Southeast are the traditional Black Belt states, but the risks don't care about race or age.

I find the density aspect of these maps skew the view of this. A dense area has a greater ability to marshal resources to adapt and to mitigate the effects of climate change which I feel these maps fail to take into account.

The statistical concepts of Mediocristan and Extremistan, identified by Nassim Taleb (of Black Swan fame) could be crucial to understanding the relations between higher average temperatures and higher frequencies of extreme events...

Did you make this video before Helene & Milton?

How does someone become a citizen of Antarctica?

Damit! The worst rated county in Florida is right beside my home county of Polk.

A very big question that we need to ask is can we make inflatable artificial mountains and spray the top of these artificial mountains with water so that snow forms on top of these mountains and we can stop droughts with the snow that is on top of these inflatable artificial mountains because all of our groundwater is coming from snow from glaciers

The metric of cost per state is a misleading metric. Cost per square area IN a state might make more sense. Large states with high development will naturally have a greater $ loss. Wyoming which is very large, but with scant development will never show high $ loss as a state.

Michigan is nice.

Just moved from Key West after 29 years. Floods whenever it rains or there is a high tide. Car insurance tripled for some last year due to all the vehicles getting written off. Lost a beach 12 years ago. 44° weather. City having to raise property tax, which is already through the roof, for the burgeoning pensions.

When a hurricane sent 30+ tornado ahead of the hurricane landfall, then you are on the list, if you have random sinkholes in people's bedroom then you are definitely on the list. Anyway places like Florida did not existed because they were under water until after the ice age

PBS may be well meaning but the insurance industry spends orders of magnitude more studying risk, or peril. Anybody think rates are about to drop in Florida. I don’t.

Interesting

TRIBULATIONS 😎

To bad they left out volcano and earthquake risks, which are already being increased due to the shift in planetary surface mass (water) from the Arctic and land ice to the equator.

Heaven help us all 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏