The risk of damage from hurricane winds will shift in coming decades. See the impact by Zip code.

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1 in 3 Americans may face risk by mid-century as winds are projected to reach further inland, northward

Hurricane winds fueled by climate change will reach further inland and put tens of millions more Americans’ lives and homes at risk in the next three decades, according to a detailed new analysis released Monday.

The data from the nonprofit First Street Foundation comes as hundreds of people remain displaced across southwest Florida, five months after Hurricane Ian barreled across the state and killed nearly 150 people.

A Washington Post analysis of the group’s data found that nearly 30 million Americans in about 235 counties across 18 states in the contiguous United States, from Texas to New England, will face new threats from hurricane-force winds. A third of Americans could experience damaging gales by 2053, in places as far inland as Tennessee and Arkansas.

People continue to move to possibly problematic areas. The Post analysis found people have been moving to counties categorized as high risk for hurricane-force winds at six times the rate of other counties.

In some places where people are flocking, few residents have lived through storms that produce destructive winds, said Kerry Emanuel, an MIT climate scientist and longtime hurricane researcher whose data helped inform the First Street analysis. “Even if the risks are well known, it doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that we are going to be well prepared,” Emanuel said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/hurricane-risk-map-us-climate/

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