Before the disaster in Los Angeles, wildfires plagued others in California

Christina Welch still remembers what the weather called a wildfire day that came within 2 miles (3.2 km) of her Santa Rosa, California, home.

It was the tubers fire of 2017, the most destructive in California history at the time. Ms Welch’s neighbor woke her up in the morning, told her to take her belongings and leave. When Miss Welch opened the door, ash fell into the sky and smoke filled the air.

Then, in 2019, the Kincade wildfire forced his parents to evacuate for five days.

It was the last push for MS Welch. After a tip from a friend, he packed his belongings and left his country for his new city: Duluth, Minnesota.

“It was just the end of it all,” the 42-year-old said. “There are only so many times I would go through all the pain of worrying about what would start a fire, if I were to lose the house.”

MS Welch is one of several people who have left California in recent years because of the frequency of severe weather, even before the wildfires in Los Angeles killed 28 people this month.

Just this week, a new, fast-moving fire broke out in Los Angeles County, northwest of the city, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate the already devastated region. Trump plans to visit Southern California on Friday to see the devastation from the blaze.

Climate experts say that so far, they haven’t seen large displacements of people from the state due to weather-related events — and it’s difficult to gauge the number of people who have left for that reason. The country’s population growth rate, however, has continued to decline since 2000, according to the US Census.

But scientists and environmentalists say climate change is leading to more extreme and unpredictable weather events, the number of people leaving the State could rise, leaving some cities unprepared.

“There may be this wave of young people who say, ‘You know what? California doesn’t know me because this is the third time that my soot and smoke will be closed,'” said University of Michigan Data Science Professor Derek van Berkel.

“We have to start preparing for those situations, because they will become more common and stronger.”

A number of climate-related factors may force Californians to leave their homes in the next decade. Scientists say that climate change has led to wildfires. From 2020 to 2023, wildfires destroyed more than 15,000 structures in California, according to Calfire. At least 12,000 structures were lost in the Los Angeles Wildfires that started earlier this year.

The state is facing other impacts from climate change as well, including flooding. Rising sea levels could put Californians in millionth percentile areas by 2100, according to the state attorney general’s office.

The state also experiences at least two earthquakes on average each year of magnitude 5.5 or greater, according to the California Department of Conservation.

As severe weather has become more frequent, home insurance rates in the state have also continued to rise. More than 100,000 California residents have lost their home insurance since 2019, according to an analysis by the San Francisco Chronicle.

The data suggests that climate migration is, so far, a local phenomenon, seeking higher ground within their home or even seeking higher ground in their hometown to avoid flooding, Jeremy Porter said. conduct climate risk modeling.

But, he said, In recent years, a small number of people have begun to set up in cities outside of California declaring it as a possible “climate”.

The term appeared in the media after climate change researcher Jesse Keenan published a study about a number of cities where people were moving because of their low risk of more extreme weather events, places Mr. Kenan calls “.

One of them was Duluth, Minnesota, once an industrial city, home to about 90,000 people, a population that has grown steadily since the year 2020 after years of overcrowding.

One of the city’s attractions is its proximity to the Great Lakes, a series of lakes that contain the largest body of water in the world. About 10% of the US and 30% of Canada rely on reservoirs for drinking water.

“In a situation where resources have declined, this is a great asset,” said Mr van Berkel.

A good water supply led Jamie Beck Alexander and his family to Dululuth. Driven by three consecutive wildfire seasons in California, Ms. Alexander, her husband and two young children moved to Minnesota in 2020.

Ms. Alexander found parallels between the small, progressive city and her old hometown of San Francisco.

“There’s a real depth of communication between people, and a deep breadth, things that I think are important for climate planning,” she said.

Ms. Welch ignored her friends who thought she was crazy to move to a city known for its record-breaking snow conditions and 106 annual record low temperatures. Christmas, the beautiful city on the hill has become his, he said.

“There are many people here who love where they live and want to protect it,” said Nksembuli in Duluth.

Although some cities have accepted their designation as resort areas, it remains a challenge for local governments to find the resources to plan for new residents and climate resilience, said Mr van Berkel.

Mr. van Berkel is working with Duluth and other cities in the Great Lakes region on climate change planning, including accommodating new residents who are moving because of climate change.

The city of Duluth declined to respond to the BBC’s request for comment on how it was preparing for the arrival of the migrants.

For now, says Mr Porter, the Great Lakes region and other “climates” are not seeing high levels of migration. But if that changed, many wouldn’t be ready, she said.

“It would take a lot of money from local communities … for those communities to be able to take the kind of situation that the climate migration literature shows,” Mr Porter said.

For example, in the city of Duluth, availability, availability of housing can be a problem, Ms. Alexander said. He said that although the city has room to build new houses, it currently does not have enough new developments for the growing population. As a result, in the years since he moved there, he said, real estate prices have risen.

And any new housing and other development needs to be done with climate change in mind, said Mr van Berkel.

“We don’t want to make costly missteps with our infrastructure when climate change rears its ugly head,” he said.

In 2024, a Category 4 hurricane destroyed more than 2,000 homes and businesses in Kelsey Lahr’s forecast of Asheville, North Carolina.

He moved there in 2020, drawn to the city’s warm weather, restaurant and music scene, after a series of devastating wild and muddy seasons near his hometown of Santa Barbara, California.

Before leaving, Ms. Lahr researched the areas most likely to have an emergency to survive, including Asheville Simo near Pop because of its high temperatures and high altitude.

But last year, Hurricane Helne made landfall in western North Carolina, killing more than a hundred people in the state and destroying MS Lahr in Asheville. Many were left without power for about 20 days and without drinking water for more than a month.

“Apparently Southern Appalachia is not the ‘climate’ it’s made out to be,” Ms. Lahr said.

In Duluth, Ms. Alexander said her family learned quickly that they could not escape climate change.

During their first summer, the city was hit by the same smog and poor air quality that was driving away from California – this time from the Canadian vein.

“It was like, this is the biggest joke of the Universe to me,” he said. “Unless we deal with the root cause [of climate change]we will always feel like we need to take and deliver. “

Still, Ms. Alexander has no regrets about her family’s move to Duluth. And MS lahr regrets moving to Asheville.

Although Ms Lahr often misses the ancient forests of Yosemite National Park in California, where she would spend her summers working as a park ranger, a future that could bring more climate disasters requires sacrifices, she said.

“I’m more thoughtful I think the climate zone is a myth,” he said. “Everybody should assess the risk where they live and move from there.”