The year is 2050 or 2060, and as climate change progresses, extreme weather is getting worse. If you live in the U.S., you might be tempted to move to another city or state—but where should you go?

By midcentury, the number of massive wildfires in California could increase by 50%. The sea level along parts of the Florida coast might rise as much as 34 inches; throughout the coastal U.S., sea-level rise could put hundreds of thousands of homes at risk from chronic flooding. Colorado could face severe droughts and lose millions from the ski industry. Michigan will face more extreme heat, droughts, and flooding. South Carolina, like many states, is likely to face a steep increase in the number of dangerously hot days each year, along with the risk of more intense hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires.

Many of the impacts, of course, are already happening now—and in the wake of some recent disasters, people are already starting to move. “I don’t think we should worry about the future; we should be terrified about the present,” says Camilo Mora, a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who led a study that examined 3,000 scientific papers about climate impacts, identifying 467 separate impacts that humans are already experiencing, from deadly heat waves to food insecurity, the spread of disease, and infrastructure damage. (The study found, unsurprisingly, that these impacts will continue to get worse, and will be particularly terrible if emissions continue on their current path.) We looked at a few of the biggest risks across the country to see if any areas may fare slightly better than others.



Extreme heat

Heat waves are already the deadliest weather disaster in the country, killing 136 people on average per year over the last 30 years. If emissions continue on a business-as-usual path, the average number of days that feel hotter than 100 degrees could more than double in the U.S., according to a recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. The impacts will be felt across the country, although the South will be hit hardest. There are likely to be a few escapes from extreme heat at high altitudes in places like the Rocky Mountains—although those areas will also face other climate impacts. “I hesitate to call them refuges from climate change more broadly,” says Kristy Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “They may not be experiencing a lot of extreme heat, but may have higher wildfire risk or drought risk.” One recent study mapped out what your city may feel like by 2050; summers in Portland, Oregon, could feel like the current sweltering weather in California’s Central Valley.

Sea level rise

Rising sea levels are already worsening floods in coastal states like Louisiana and New Jersey, and that’s a trend that’s only projected to get worse. A July report from Zillow and the nonprofit Climate Central estimated that more than 800,000 homes could be at risk from flooding by 2050. “Long before these properties and infrastructure are permanently underwater, millions of Americans living in coastal communities will face more frequent flooding, as the tides inch higher and reach farther inland,” Union of Concerned Scientists researchers wrote in another report that analyzed 13,000 miles of coastline in the contiguous U.S.

In some areas, property values have already dropped by billions of dollars because of sea-level rise. Areas away from the coast can avoid the impacts of sea-level rise—including devastating storm surge flooding when hurricanes hit—but may still face flooding from heavier storms. (Even near the coast, heavy rains may sometimes cause more damage than a storm surge; when Hurricane Harvey dumped as much as 127 billion tons of water on Texas, scientists calculated that climate change made the record rainfall three times more likely.)

Note that although the map above focuses on the Eastern U.S., the West Coast will also face flooding. On the East Coast, impacts may be worse, both because sea levels are rising faster there than they are globally, and because the East Coast has to deal with hurricanes. “You shouldn’t be living in a coastal area,” says Mora. “Coastal areas are just prone to so many disasters, from sea level rise, to water pollution and infiltration, to hurricanes, and then you get the all of the hazards that happen on land, like heat waves and fires. One example is Florida. Florida last summer got hit by everything, from wildfires to heat waves to hurricanes, all in a single year.”