![]() (Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily via AP) The last of usĪ lot of people have been moving to places like Florida and Texas, which face elevated risks from disasters. New snow coats the town of Avon in Eagle County, Colo., Monday, Jan. The western half of Colorado stands out for how calm it is now and how calm it will remain when it comes to the risks associated with natural disasters. And California is overdue for more intense seismic events, the kind that could generate large tsunamis. Larger and longer-lasting tornados and more punishing hail storms are expected to rake the Plains states, one reason Colorado’s eastern counties don’t make the list. The Texas and Florida coasts are expected to get hammered with more extreme hurricanes and higher storm surges. Looking ahead, the northeast will face more massive and crippling snow storms. “All we have done is take a look on a county-by-county basis to see which counties fared the best,” Srinivasan said. The study also estimated earthquake exposure, which isn’t directly linked to climate change, but could cause massive devastation in certain states like California. To gauge how risk might change going forward, the study looked at different climate scenarios as determined by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and modeled the more severe “8.5” scenario for its 2050 calculations. It then looked at the characteristics of properties within counties, things like building height and age, that could contribute to damage resistance, and it evaluated replacement costs, normalizing values so a San Francisco could be compared with a Wichita. For the study, it assessed how likely different kinds of perils were and how risks might correlate, say wildfires that contributed to mudslides or flooding during hurricanes or hail damage from tornados. The climate change sanctuary covers swaths of eastern Utah, western Colorado and northern New Mexico.ĬoreLogic sells products and data to insurers. ![]() where these counties are all clustered,” said Anand Srinivasan, an executive with CoreLogic focused on climate change. “There is a narrow location window of the part of the U.S. People walk through downtown Salida on July 24, 2022, in Chaffee County. Surprisingly, heavily forested Summit County comes in as the third safest place by 2050, with Eagle, San Juan and Chaffee counties holding spots 8 to 10. ![]() Colorado, once considered a comparatively calm state, went from 14 to 49, which ranked eighth among states with a 250% gain. Nationally, the number of massive natural disasters causing $1 billion or more in damage, adjusted for inflation, has risen from 84 between 1983 to 2002 to 221 between 2003 to 2022, an increase of 163%, according to a study from QuoteWizard, an insurance marketplace. “But it is normal for our rivers to run over their banks and it helps with the native hay and grass.” “We expect some flooding this spring, down in the flatter part of the county,” he said. But the fire didn’t destroy any buildings or claim any lives. Last May, one of the larger ones in recent history, the Menkhaven fire, took about eight days to put out at a cost of $1.6 million, King said. The county was among the first in Colorado to record a severe pine beetle infestation years ago and wildfires remain a year-round risk. But locals are used to burning wood and coping until the power comes back on. ![]() Winter temperatures can get bitterly cold and storms do knock the power out about twice a year up in the canyons. Snow is plentiful higher up, but lower down, where most residents live, paralyzing dumps aren’t common. “We do have earthquakes, usually along the Sangre de Cristo Range, but they are so mild that we don’t ever feel them.” We get some hail, usually pea-sized and sometimes it will get to marble-sized,” he said. “We have no hurricanes and we have no tornadoes, although we do get high winds, the kind that can knock over power poles. But when it comes to having to act on those plans, not much catastrophic happens in this off-the-beaten-path border region south of Alamosa. Rodney King heads up emergency management efforts in Conejos County and plans ways to protect residents from the worst-case scenarios. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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