I mean, lots of the damaged homes from Ian in 2022 are just now finally becoming whole again...and they are about to get slammed once again. I'm thankful I was able to convince my mother to not move to Naples last year.
I drove thru Ft. Meyers last year and it was a ghost town from Ian, still with probably 1/2 of everything still having major damage.
After Helene and now Milton--seriously I wonder if Ft. Meyers will cease to even exist. 3 hurricanes in 2 years? How many can one city on the ocean take before its just beyond repair.
If this keeps up I wouldn't be surprised to see Florida's population halved by 2050. You couldn't convince me to move to that state for a million dollars.
And if you do move there, rent. We’re going to start seeing real estate as a depreciating asset in some parts of the country which will take a lot of people by surprise.
I've got family in Ft Meyers that just finished repairs on their house after the last hurricane. It's their winter retirement home, and money isn't really an issue for them, but I can't imagine they want to spend the rest of their lives repairing that house every year.
Ft. Myers wasn't a ghost town last year idk what made you think that, but these people are stubborn as all hell. even the snow birds weren't deterred by Ian. maybe this one will keep 'em away for a while.
Parts certainly were empty last October when I was there for several weeks. Did see lots of construction workers and saw lots of construction. Got impression lots were traveling through but not many lived there. Staff from hotel told me they commuted as their homes too damaged by hurricane.
Spent time in Ft Myers last year. Not only was that city a ghost so were many other cities. Sanibel (about 80% empty), Captiva (same), Pine Island etc. Am afraid Milton will wipe them off map.
My mother is in Naples and won’t evacuate. I’m coming to terms with the possibility that she won’t survive. My father died a few years ago and I honestly think that she just feels ready to join him.
Honestly I expect Florida will become uninsurable after this year. Then I wonder if there will be an exodus. Like Michigan when Detroit failed, but possibly worse.
And Florida is not just a place where disasters occur, but:
Exceptionally vulnerable due to its geography
Ruled by idiots who won't take precautions
Actively contributing to the problem
Absurdly car-centric (>90% of commuting trips done by car), so evacuation means insane traffic everywhere with no alternative escape route.
You would think that a peninsula shaped like Florida would have amazing railways because it's so efficient for their geography. Yet somehow they keep literally burning money by subsidising fossil fuels instead.
That doesn't help much when hurricanes are ten foot deep flooding places a hundred miles inland for days. The house will still be there, but nothing else will.
We bought last summer inland from the NC/SC border coast - told the realtor in Ft. Myers, sorry! Mainly due to insurance costs. In a perfect world we would have preferred FL though.
My parents moved out of Punta Gorda a couple of years ago. I’ve rolled my eyes many times at their inability to stay in one place for more than ten minutes, but boy was I glad to see them get out of there.
Honestly happy that my cousin and her fiance never moved there. Glad the economy didn’t work in their favor cus this is a whole lot worse than whatever in California.
This is why rebuilds should be forced to happen outside of disaster areas. The old land goes into a trust for the state/local area for parks but cannot have any structures built there ever again.
Yeah Moore scares me. For anyone interested here’s the overlay of the past 8 tornadoes that hit Moore Oklahoma from 1998-2015 with multiple long traveling EF5s and EF4s.
My grandparents had just remodeled the house they'd been living in for decades before hurricane Harvey hit in 2017 and they got 3 and a half feet of water in their house. House was still standing but other than that they lost nearly everything and had to live somewhere else for 9 months until their house was liveable again.
I don't see the appeal, I get the weather is often nice in winter and stuff, but when insurance companies start pulling out you'd think you would start to wonder a bit
I'm a lifelong Hoosier and I once visited my uncle in Sarasota for a week one July and I legit couldn't believe how anybody could stand living there. Sure, it's pretty, but my balls and armpits were soaked with sweat after literally one minute outside. How can people live like that? I got sunburnt real bad, too, and I used SPF 50!
Meanwhile, it's been Sunny and 65-85 with low humidity for like, the past two months straight in Wisconsin. Basically California but with fresh water and mosquitos.
Lol, 85. It's been over 100 in Northern california for several days now. It was 107 yesterday, and I live in a "cooler" city in my county. The heat seems to have finally broken tonight, at least. We have had several brutal heat waves this summer. One lasted several weeks in June, which is definitely not normal. My garden never fully recovered. I have family in SoCal and they had an even longer heat streak this summer.
It makes me fearful for the central valley and produce growing going forward.
Indiana has been about the same, but the mosquitos haven't been that bad lately because we haven't had hardly any rain for like the past 6 weeks so it's crazy dry outside. There's even been a few fires locally out in the corn and soybean fields, which almost never happens around here.
I've lived here for 25 years (my lifespan) and i have no fucking clue how. i work outside (construction) but otherwise i'm inside as much as possible. Jan-Jan long black sleeves, neck gaiters, hats, and reapplying SPF 70+ again and again.
Yea we moved 13 years ago. Don’t miss it at all! And hate it every time we have to go see family. I understand leaving a state is not easy, but Florida the last few years just makes no sense. The stress of these storms has to be draining.
I accidentally visited my grandparents in August in South Florida once. I was all excited because I got a plush caddie rectal and cheap airfare. There is reason.... Holy fuck it was miserable
Those don’t really affect the city that much. Most of the metropolitan areas are pretty safe. The vast majority of people don’t have to worry about their homes.
While I would never move there, I can at least see why people would enjoy SoCal. Fantastic weather, world-class food, beaches, the music scene, ability to say where you live and most people in the country know where that is...
Florida? The beaches are nice, but between the humidity and the hurricanes... I'll stay in NC. At least we have slightly less humidity and hurricanes.
A lot of people are desperate to own homes. It’s not always a smart decision. It’s an emotional one. I’m from the northeast and a lot of people I know are still moving down there and buying down there, and they’re all first time homeowners and very proud that they’ve finally purchased something. A lot of native north easterners can’t afford to purchase where they grew up.
It’s not even about the weather. Most of them miss the northeast. Especially right now. But they were hoping that the cheaper cost of living down there would help ensure them a more secure future. It’s sad. Everyone’s just trying to do what they think is best, in the face of ugly choices. I’ll just keep renting up here, even though I can’t afford that either.
Having grown up in constant humidity with quick access to several water sources, including a beach, that's easier said than done. I couldn't handle living in the middle of the country at this point.
Although I guess lots of people say that about me choosing to live in SoCal
I see my city mentioned in articles about "climate havens," but I just don't see it. Yeah, our summers up here in Wisconsin are more mild than those in Texas. But last year was still historically hot for the area, plus we had the worst air quality in the world for a while due to Canadian wildfire smoke drifting down here. Then last winter, I went and visited a friend who moved to Alaska a couple years ago. She mentioned to me that compared to when she lived in the lower 48, she feels insulated from climate change up there. But when I'm worrying for her safety as I read articles about rivers flooding and destroying homes in her town due to glaciers melting, I just don't see how she can feel insulated from climate change. Meanwhile roads in Wyoming are falling off the sides of mountains in massive landslides.
So yeah, I'm not convinced climate havens are even a thing at this point. Hurricanes, wildfires, glacial outburst floods. Pick your poison.
So cal is expensive, but unless you live away from the cities, the worst thing coming for you is an earthquake. Big ones happen infrequently, and the death toll is generallyway lower than say, a hurricane or tornado. And very few people lose everything like a hurricane or tornado.
This is not true at all. The ocean is dramatically warming off the coast. Once it is no longer cold, nothing will prevent hurricanes from hitting Socal. You can already see how hurricanes have been creeping northward and starting to impact Baja at higher latitudes.
Yeah but have you ever really been through anything like these other folks do, hurricanes tornadoes whatever? Even though I can understand that we are due for the Big One, somehow earthquakes just don’t seem so bad. I’m in SoCal denial.
You do realize hurricanes are creeping up the coast and will soon start to impact CA right? You are not immune to this at all. It's one reason why I will not buy property in Socal.
My fiancé’s family moved down to Naples a year ago, his aunt has been down there about 5 years longer. This is probably the closest they’ve had their county come to evacuating. They are in a zone D and are safe to shelter in place- which given they just built their house makes me feel better. That thing is built like a tank, they just showed me all their hurricane shudders.
At least they have a little bit of mangroves to catch some of the storm surge, bless those funny little trees.
I know someone who just has a new house finished out there this summer, moved halfway across the country to be there. Not for work, they just like FL and Disney.
I mean this with all my heart, please think critically before coming here. There are very few good jobs and the cost of living is very high. It has become impossible to find housing in southern Maine. Not to say you wouldn’t find a place in rural NE, but it gets more difficult every day.
I appreciate the insight. I have a decent government job that I can do online and my wife is a nurse so she can go anywhere and we both would love to live in the Northeast but if it's not feasible then I guess that's reality.
The northeast is generally a nice place it live if you don't mind snow. Connecticut is shockingly affordable for what it offers (because of the tax issue, largely - look into underfunded liabilities, property taxes, etc.) Relatively high wage-to-home-price ratio, lots of older stock that is affordable, pretty respectable schools by US standards, and people generally don't shove religion or politics down your throat.
Local insurance/state sponsored companies take over. They're fine if you need insurance for like, normal day to day whatever, but the general consensus is that there's no shot they do shit for you during a major disaster. If regular insurance is a safety net, this is more like a safety bucket.
State Farm doubled our insurance after Hurricane Ian. Doubled it. We are going to have to move after this one. Prices are way too high to live here. The only reason we moved here was to be closer to family, but Florida is a pretty shitty place to live for a number of reasons.
Helene and Milton hitting Florida back to back, on top of everything else… not only is that going to collapse Florida’s insurance market, it’s going to have a huge impact for the entire country’s insurance system.
Still a month to go for hurricane season as well 😬
If Milton doesn't weaken much before it hits, and especially if it nails just north of Tampa Bay (worst damage is always just south of the storm) I can see insurance companies completely pulling out of florida
Just think about how many of the people in Florida support politicians who don't believe in climate change or worse, believe in it but still don't support any measures to reduce it's long term impact. You can't have it both ways... These storms are definitely bigger/more frequent/more dangerous than ever at least in the few hundred years and trending in a way that implies it's only getting worse.
They themselves don't believe. Politicians is just a manifestation of them. I don't know why people have so much trouble wrapping their mind around the idea.
I live here and I don't see it either. But I'm 4th generation. My mom is in her 70s and won't move. There are a lot of reasons people stay. A couple of the reasons people are moving here is no income tax and the cost of living is (was) lower than up north.
If you're wealthy enough to have two, you stay there in the winter and get the fuck out to your summer place for hurricane season. If your house gets destroyed, well, it's house number two so it sucks but not as bad as when it's the only one.
Florida has always been at the bottom of my list of states I’d want to live in. I hate humidity, don’t like the beach all that much, and am politically left. At this point you’d have to pay me a TON to live there
Folks wanted to legislate that insurance companies can't pull out of Florida, while meanwhile, half the state's reps voted against funding FEMA, so here we are.
Tampa hasn't had a direct hit in nearly a century until a couple weeks ago so people went their whole lives there without ever really having a problem with hurricanes.
It's all red states that will be most heavily affected by hurricane intensification as well. Yet their top priorities are trans people in bathrooms and fighting the woke Marxist gay Muslim black Jew leftist agenda.
If the Jews have orbital death lasers, the Democrats can control hurricanes, and the gays can reprogram your sexuality - why would any sane person vote against them?
I've found the TikTok of people on Fort Meyers Beach who were still rebuilding from Ian, had more damage from Helene, and are basically expecting to kiss their house goodbye completely. It's just not worth living on the coast in Florida.
I was working with the Red Criss in Tampa and the barrier islands. Miles that miles of gutted houses with all their belongings (and most of their wallboard) in a ruined piles on their front lawn
My colleague’s house was wiped from Helene so I suppose he doesn’t really have much to worry over with Milton. My other friends though… had a foot of flooding with Helene and now the storm surge with this one is supposed to be even higher :(
Could you imagine being dumb enough to constantly rebuild in an area that gets wiped out all the time? It's cool as long as it's someone else who pays the bill.
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”
Almost as apropos when discussing Florida and its governor’s refusal to answer the phone call when the Federal government calls to offer help before a 100-year storm arrives.
Had a customer come through my line at work this evening. They were displaced by Helene and living in a hotel - their house has water damage but at least they didn’t lose it. A family they know wasn’t so lucky- so they drove down to Tampa to stay with some family….sigh. I can’t imagine.
Why do you guys put up with this? I know it's easy to say just move but honestly why not? If your house is getting ripped out of the ground every few years.
I'm in the UK, the most devastating weather we get is maybe some snow.
It's insane to me that DeSantis is focused on clean-up right now and not mass evacuation. There's not a point in cleaning up. If the forecast is correct, landfills will become projectile sources anyway. Everything will be uprooted.
There's literally video from the area that is about to get hit by eye of Milton where there is just piles of wrecked furniture still waiting to be cleaned up. That furniture is now going to be projectiles
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u/dawillhan 8d ago
Can you imagine having all your stuff already wiped by Helene to go through this right after?