The southeastern United States is recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which downed trees, flooded homes and killed more than 215 people after sweeping through Florida late last week.
Families in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Florida are mourning the loss of their loved ones, inspecting devastated properties and beginning to rebuild their shattered lives.
But for those affected (and for increasingly more people in the rest of the country), Helene raises troubling questions about the future of their homes, communities and livelihoods.
Millions of people have already been forced to relocate due to worsening storms, wildfires, heat and flooding, and tens of millions more will join the great climate migration in the coming decades.
The question on many Americans’ lips is: ‘Is my family in danger?’
Destroyed houses are seen in Chimney Rock, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene
To help answer this, The Mail worked with SafeHome.org, a research group, to classify and then plot the lower 48 US states that were most at risk of climate disasters.
Across the United States, the average risk from climate change impacts scored 229 on the index, but in some states, that number is much higher, says the group’s researcher, Rob Gabriele.
“There are a handful of unlucky states that, due to their geographical location, will be especially threatened by climate change,” says Gabriele.
Topping the index was Florida, with a risk factor of 308.
This may not surprise residents of the Big Bend region, where Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26, flattening homes with its 140 mile per hour winds.
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 be hardest hit by climate change are in the southern United States.
Those with long coastlines are in the greatest danger, as melting ice caps and rising sea levels increase the danger of flooding.
The index also offers guidance on where climate migrants should go.
The safest destination is landlocked Vermont, with a risk score of just 30.
The Green Mountains state is threatened by extreme summer temperatures, researchers said, but is likely to be spared from drought, wildfires or floods.
New Hampshire (63), Massachusetts (99), Minnesota (104), and Colorado (106) rank among the five least threatened states in the country.
The second clear pattern is that many of the safest states are in the northeastern United States, which will suffer less severe effects of climate change than other places.
Laurie Lilliott stands in the rubble of her destroyed home in Dekle Beach, rural Taylor County, Florida, after Hurricane Helene.
A North Carolina resident rescues what’s left of his belongings from his flooded home in Kinston after Hurricane Florence in 2018.
The U.S. Coast Guard conducts urban search and rescue following 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 of extreme weather events.
There was not enough information available to classify Alaska and Hawaii for the study.
The research may offer a roadmap for those left 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 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 sea defenses and into neighborhoods and homes, rising in some places as much as six feet above ground level.
At least 11 people died in Tampa Bay, more than 1,000 were rescued and tens of thousands saw their homes flooded.
For Kento Kawakami, a resident of lower Davis Island near downtown Tampa, Helene brought home a problem that has been worsening for years.
Helene followed a similar path to Hurricane Idalia last August and Hurricane Debby last month, which also submerged large swaths of the area.
“I feel like the situation is getting worse every year,” Kawakami told the New York Times.
“At some point, you can’t ignore that anymore.”
Others have already made the effort and have reached safety.
Alex Hannaford and his family left Texas in 2020, which is ranked as the seventh most endangered state in the United States, with a risk factor of 264.
The 50-year-old says they were escaping the increasingly frequent scorching 100°F days, among other reasons.
A plane lands at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport during a heat wave in July 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona.
A firefighter tackles a wildfire in the Angeles National Forest in California in September 2024.
An aerial view of a tractor operating near the drought-ravaged Salton Sea in July 2022, near Mecca, California.
“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 a growing population and climate change deplete groundwater supplies.
They moved about 2,000 miles to upstate New York, where Hannaford says they enjoy having “seasons again” and escaped the extreme heat.
He even goes so far as to call his family “climate refugees.”
Those living in the path of hurricanes and wildfires have encountered a problem beyond the powers of Mother Nature: lack of insurance.
A report last month from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that residents in high-risk areas were struggling to insure their properties against natural disasters, which was becoming more expensive or no longer available.
But Americans don’t seem to pay attention to these danger signs, as much internal migration heads to states most threatened by climate change.
New York, California and other relatively expensive states have lost people in recent years to southern states like Florida and Texas.
Florida, which is frequently hit by hurricanes, gained millions of new residents between 2000 and 2023.
Meanwhile, Texas boom cities like Houston, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth have boomed in recent years even though each is at risk from many climate hazards.
Helene’s devastation has certainly reignited fears of climate chaos, but for now, it appears some Americans will continue to edge closer to the eye of the storm.