They came to Asheville looking for a 'climate haven.' Then came Hurricane Helene

When Mary Ann Roser and her husband moved from Austin, Texas to Asheville, North Carolina four months ago, they introduced themselves to some of their new neighbors as “climate refugees from Austin,” she says.

After 30 years in Austin, the summers were getting hotter and hotter, Roser says. “He and I just thought it was not sustainable. And so consequently, we started thinking, ‘where would we go?’” she says.

They settled on Asheville as a place that was “more climate friendly,” she says. It had milder summers than Austin, less drought and wildfire risk than other places on their list, plus distance from the coast and sea level rise.

“It sounded really nice and I looked up hurricanes and tornadoes, and it said basically not a problem here,” Roser says.

Many people have moved to Asheville in recent years in search of a climate haven, says Mike Figura, an Asheville-based real estate broker who studied climatology in college.

Now, Asheville is one of many places facing death and widespread destruction because of Hurricane Helene. A new analysis from the World Weather Attribution group, an international association of climate scientists that quickly assesses the impact of climate change on weather events, finds that human-caused climate change made Hurricane Helene’s rainfall about 10% heavier.

Meade Krosby, senior scientist with the climate impacts group at the University of Washington, says she understands why people moved to Asheville looking for a climate haven. “People are looking for places they can feel safe,” she says. “I think that’s a very human response to something that’s quite scary.”

But Krosby says she finds the concept of climate havens concerning. She notes her city, Seattle, was once thought of as a climate refuge. After hundreds died in the 2021 heat wave, fewer people think of it that way, she says.

“It’s really both a privilege and a fantasy to think that we can escape to someplace that’s perfectly insulated from the climate crisis,” Krosby says. “Is any place without risk? No. And that’s where I think we get into some trouble.”

“Billed as a climate haven”

Researchers predict millions of Americans will move because of climate change. A study from the First Street Foundation, a corporation that publishes analyses about climate hazards, found that more than 3.2 million Americans have already migrated out of areas with increased flood risk.

Some U.S. cities hope to attract some of the displaced. Buffalo, New York and Cincinnati, Ohio have referred to themselves as a “climate change refuge” and a “climate haven” respectively.

In Asheville, Figura has shown homes to people “who viewed this as a safe haven from wildfires out west and hurricanes that were hitting more coastal areas.”

Kelsey Lahr is one of the newcomers, a writer and editor who moved to Asheville from California four years ago to escape wildfires. “Honestly, I just Googled ‘where are the best places to live for climate change?’” she says.

“This area looked like it ranked really highly in safety against natural disasters,” she says. “Southern Appalachia was kind of this little island of the bright green, like ‘this is going to be good to go!”

Lahr, a former park ranger in Yosemite National Park, had lived through several wildfires. California’s wildfires are more explosive in part because of climate change.

“It got to a point where I was reliably getting evacuated or put on evacuation warning from wildfires at least once a year — often more than that,” Lahr says. “After my last evacuation out of Yosemite, and weeks long displacement, I was like, ‘I just don’t think that this is really a way to live.’”

After she moved to North Carolina her parents followed. Her friend from Colorado moved to Asheville after tiring of breathing wildfire smoke. “This was just kind of billed as a climate haven,” Lahr says.

While some places are more at risk of climate-related disasters than others, the idea of climate havens has often been a disservice to the public because of a lack of nuance, says Samantha Montano, a professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

“What I think people are kind of missing from their interpretation of ‘climate haven’ is this issue of likelihood,” she says. “Just because it is less likely for a specific disaster to happen in one community does not mean that it is not going to happen in that community.”

While Asheville is far from the coast, North Carolina is vulnerable to extreme rain and inland flood events linked to tropical storms and hurricanes because of its relative proximity to the warm Gulf of Mexico, and also its coastline on the warming Atlantic Ocean, says Kathie Dello, North Carolina state climatologist.

Oceans absorb most of the extra heat that’s trapped on Earth by planet-warming pollution, which means that storms now form over warmer ocean water than before. Hotter oceans act as fuel for hurricanes and help them get stronger. Global warming also means the air holds more water vapor, making rain storms more intense and deadly. All those factors shaping hurricanes can lead to more dangerous flooding impacts even after these storms travel far inland.

Some places with historically mild climates — like Asheville and Seattle — don’t have the infrastructure for extreme weather events when they happen, which can make impacts more deadly, Krosby says.

“Unfortunately, Hurricane Helene has been another wake up call, I think, for people about how expansive climate impacts actually are,” Montano says.

“There’s no outrunning climate change”

The ability to move from climate risk is a privilege many Americans don’t have, Krosby says. Many Americans don’t have the economic resources to move. “Climate flight will leave behind people and places that are going to be most vulnerable and actually in need of that community support and investment when people leave,” Krosby says.

For many Tribal communities who are tied to their land, moving also isn’t an option, says Amelia Marchand, executive director of the conservation nonprofit the L.I.G.H.T. Foundation and a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington. “Communities, and families, and people that are connected to lands and waters of a certain place; not just for one or two or three generations but for literally thousands of years,” she says. “Those are relationships and places that cannot be picked up and moved.”

Lahr says she was fortunate. While she has water damage on her floors and doesn’t yet know the cost, and while she currently doesn’t have running water, she and her parents are safe and her house is mostly okay. She says for her, Hurricane Helene has underscored the importance of addressing the drivers of global warming, including the burning of fossil fuels.

Roser says she also is fortunate. While her home currently doesn’t have running water, it was not damaged. As for her family’s recent move? “I mean it seems ironic now because we never experienced a hurricane in Austin,” Roser says.

“People are like, ‘Boy, I hope you don’t regret moving here.’ And we don’t. We don’t regret it,” she says, adding that she still thinks Austin would have been too hot for them in the long term.

“There’s no outrunning climate change,” Roser says. “It’s a global phenomenon. And, you know, I guess it was our turn.”