People are absolutely moving because of weather. The PNW has had terrible summers for about the past 5 years. Before there were decades of great mild summer weather, often July, Aug, Sept. These past few years there were smoke concentrations at deadly levels. Not just from one forest fire. Multiple fires every year. This is separate from the danger of a fire burning your house down. My coastal area wasn't right next to a fire, it was hundreds of miles away. The weather patterns were pulling air from the interior to the coast. If you live in Washington, Oregon, or northern California you were endangering your life if went outside. My nextdoor neighbor told me he was moving to get away from that. This was 2 years ago. Since then it has gotten worse. We've thought of selling our mountain cabin. Instead of the summer, people say our 4th season is the smoke season, only half jokingly.
At the same time, people keep moving here because we have so many jobs. There aren't that many people moving away, but lots more talk about it. I think about another 5 years will really accelerate the trend. We all know there have been historical times when there was some smoky air. Even Mark Twain wrote about it when he visited Seattle more than 100 years ago. Now it's happening every year, with severe impact. All my friends bought air conditions for the first time including me, and we also have air cleaners and air quality gauges for our inside air.
I can't talk about USA but personally I move from a major Italian city toward French Alps also (witch means, not only) for climate. My original city is not much suffering so far, floods happen sometimes but not in the part of the city I was living, but hot summer simply became too long and hot for my taste while winter rainy weather with now almost no snow is less and less appealing.
I have had various reasons, not just climate, I also want to live outside the city I consider about to became sky open prisons with density problems become so big and broad that they outweigh the benefits of being near, I also want nature etc. But climate was a part of the decision.
Not so many but others I know have made or are evaluating different relocation also for climatic reasons. So well, for us in the south/central Europe for now there is no much internal migration due to climate change, but start to happen and to be discussed not in talk show and interested lobby-setups but on casual middle-class citizens topics.
I wasn't able to open the pro publica link. The second like has a thumbnail of the map, but I couldn't find a high resolution, zoom able version.
My takeaway from interpreting the thumbnail map is that the aquifer in the central valley of California and another big area in Texas is in trouble, mostly ok in the US otherwise.
So if I steer clear of the central valley and So Cal from LA all the way east to Texas or so (LA, Vegas, Arizona and texas) am I avoiding most of the trouble spots?
I'm just trying to get through thr fear mongering and get to brass tacks. Where can I buy a property that will likely still have a good well in 30 years, where can I not?
I've had trouble finding good data on this. Locally, farmers have had their water cut to the bone, upstream reservoirs are empty, and people are paying big bucks to drill their wells deeper. It's a notable change over 8 years. We're set for now as regular consumers, but I don't feel comfortable betting on the 15-year timeframe where I live now.
So we're eyeing the more sure things, e.g. far PNW, and NE US.
I certainly wouldn't move to an area that depends on the Colorado river, but that's just me.
And who knows--maybe something will trigger with climate change and Vegas suddenly gets rain soaked and verdant.
I don't blame the guy and now he has plenty of money to do what he wants and not deal with the bullshit. Corporate America sucks. it is a horrible "culture".
Not everyone wants fame, fortune maybe, but not fame.
