The southeastern US is reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which toppled trees, flooded homes and killed more than 215 people after slamming into Florida late last week.
Families in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Florida mourn lost loved ones, inspect destroyed properties and begin to rebuild their shattered lives.
But for those affected – and increasingly more people across the country – Helene raises troubling questions about the future of their homes, communities and livelihoods.
Millions of people have already been forced to move due to worsening storms, wildfires, heat and floods, and tens of millions more will join the great climate migration in the coming decades.
The question on the lips of many Americans is, “Is my family in danger?”
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Destroyed homes are seen in Chimney Rock, North Carolina, after the passage of Hurricane Helene
To help answer this, The Mail teamed up with SafeHome.org, a research group arrange and then map the bottom 48 U.S. states most at risk of weather disasters.
Across the US, the average risk of climate change impacts on the index was scored at 229 – but for some states that number is much higher, says the group’s researcher Rob Gabriele.
“There are a handful of unlucky states that will be particularly threatened by climate change because of their geography,” says Gabriele.
At the top of the index was Florida, with a risk factor of 308.
This should come as no surprise to residents of the Big Bend region, where Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26, leveling homes with winds of 140 miles per hour.
South Carolina (with a risk factor of 282), Louisiana (281), North Carolina (276) and Mississippi (270) rounded out the five most threatened states.
The pattern is clear: nine of the 10 states likely to bear the brunt of climate change are spread across the American South.
Those with long coastlines are most at risk, as melting ice caps and rising sea levels increase the risk of flooding.
The index also provides guidance on where climate migrants should go.
The safest destination is landlocked Vermont, with a risk score of just 30.
The Green Mountain State is threatened by extreme temperatures in summer, researchers say, but will likely be spared from drought, wildfires or floods.
New Hampshire (63), Massachusetts (99), Minnesota (104) and Colorado (106), rounded up to the five least endangered states in the country.
The second clear pattern is that many of the safest states are in the American Northeast, where the impacts of climate change will be less severe than elsewhere.
Laurie Lilliott stands amid the wreckage of her destroyed home in Dekle Beach in rural Taylor County, Florida, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
A North Carolina resident rescues what remains of his belongings from his flooded home in Kinston after Hurricane Florence struck in 2018.
U.S. Coast Guards conduct urban search and rescue in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, in Keaton Beach, Florida.
To create the index, researchers used data from Climate Central, a New Jersey-based institute, on the number of people at risk from extreme weather events.
There wasn’t enough information available to rank Alaska and Hawaii for the study.
The research could provide a road map for those who are homeless, destitute or simply frightened by Helene, which is among the deadliest storms in U.S. history.
Among them are residents of Tampa Bay, which is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of where Helene made landfall but is a much more densely populated area.
There, the storm pushed seawater from the Gulf of Mexico over the seawall and into neighborhoods and homes, in some places up to two meters above ground level.
At least eleven people died in Tampa Bay, more than a thousand were rescued and tens of thousands saw their homes flooded.
For Kento Kawakami, a resident of low-lying Davis Island, near downtown Tampa, Helene highlighted a problem that has been growing worse for years.
Helene followed a similar path to Hurricane Idalia last August and Hurricane Debby last month, which also flooded large parts of the area.
“I feel like it’s getting worse every year,” Kawakami told The New York Times.
‘At a certain point you can’t ignore it anymore.’
Others have already bitten the bullet and moved out of harm’s way.
Alex Hannaford and his family left Texas in 2020, which ranks as the seventh most endangered US state, with a risk factor of 264.
The 50-year-old says one of the things they did was escape the increasingly common 30°C scorching days.
A plane lands at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport during a heat wave in July 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona.
A firefighter battles a wildfire in California’s Angeles National Forest in September 2024.
An aerial view of a tractor operating near the drought-stricken Salton Sea, near Mecca, California, in July 2022.
“Austin is getting hotter and drier, and water is not a finite resource,” he told The Mail.
The rivers and waterholes he once enjoyed with his family are drying up, he says, as growing populations and climate change have depleted groundwater supplies.
They moved about 2,000 miles to upstate New York, where Hannaford says they enjoy having “seasons again” and have escaped the extreme heat.
He even goes so far as to call his family “climate refugees.”
Those who live in the path of hurricanes and wildfires have encountered a problem beyond Mother Nature’s control: a lack of insurance.
A report last month from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that residents of at-risk areas were struggling to insure their properties against natural disasters, which either became more expensive or became no longer available.
But Americans don’t seem to be heeding these danger signals — as much domestic migration is happening to the states most threatened by climate change.
New York, California and other relatively expensive states have lost people to southern states like Florida and Texas in recent years.
Florida, which is regularly hit by hurricanes, gained millions of new residents between 2000 and 2023.
Meanwhile, Texas boomtowns like Houston, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth have exploded in recent years, despite all being at risk from many climate hazards.
Helene’s devastation has undoubtedly reignited fears of climate chaos, but for now it appears some Americans will remain in the eye of the storm.
