Before the Los Angeles disaster, wildfires pushed others out of California.

Christina Welch still remembers the day the sky showed a wildfire within 2 miles (3.2 km) of Santa Rosa, California.

The 2017 Tubbs Fire was the most destructive in California history at the time. Ms Welch’s neighbor woke her up in the morning and told her to grab her belongings and leave. When Mr. Welch opened the door, ash fell from the sky and smoke filled the air.

Then in 2019, the Kincade Wildfire forced my parents to evacuate for five days.

It was Mr. Welch’s final push. After receiving advice from a friend, she packed her belongings and headed across the country to her new hometown of Duluth, Minnesota.

“This is just the culmination of everything,” the 42-year-old said. “If you’re going to lose your home, you’re going to approach every fall worrying about what’s going to catch fire.”

Welch is one of several people who have left California in recent years due to the frequency of extreme weather, even before the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history killed 28 people this month.

A new, fast-moving wildfire broke out in Los Angeles County, northwest of the city, this week, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate an area already spared destruction. Trump plans to visit Southern California on Friday to witness the devastation of the Blaze.

Climate experts say the country has not seen mass migration due to climate-related events so far. It is difficult to estimate the number of people who left for that reason. However, according to the U.S. Census, the state’s population growth rate has continued to decline since 2000.

But scientists and demographers say climate change could increase the number of people leaving the country as weather changes become more extreme and unpredictable, leaving some cities unprepared as they work to welcome new residents. says:

“This new wave of people is going to say, ‘You know what? California, California, is not going to work for me, because for the third time in five years, we’ve had to get sooted and shut down,’” said Derek, a data science professor at the University of Michigan. Derek Van Berkel said:

“We need to prepare for these events because they will become more frequent and more extreme.”

Many climate-related factors could force Californians to leave their homes over the next decade. Scientists say climate change has led to more frequent wildfires. From 2020 to 2023, wildfires have destroyed more than 15,000 structures in California, according to Calfire. At least 12,000 structures were lost in the Los Angeles wildfires that occurred earlier this year.

The country faces other impacts from climate change, including flooding. Rising sea levels could place half a million Californians in flood-prone areas by 2100, according to the state attorney general.

According to California Conservation, the state deals with an average of more than two earthquakes of magnitude 5.5 each year.

As extreme weather becomes more frequent, state home insurance premiums also continue to increase. More than 100,000 Californians have lost home insurance since 2019, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis.

The data shows that climate migration has by far been a more regional phenomenon, with some people moving inland within their countries or seeking higher ground in their cities to avoid flooding. Conduct climate risk modeling.

But he said in recent years, a small number of people have started flocking to cities outside of California to advertise them as potential “climate havens.”

Climate adaptation researcher Jesse Keenan was in the media after publishing a study on a small number of cities that were at low risk for extreme climate events.

One of them is Duluth, Minnesota, a former industrial city of about 90,000 whose population has grown slowly since 2020 after years of stagnation.

One of the town’s draws is its proximity to the Great Lakes, a series of lakes containing the largest body of freshwater in the world. About 10% of the United States and 30% of Canada rely on lakes for drinking water.

“In resource-poor scenarios, this is a tremendous asset,” Van Berkel said.

The Great Lakes water supply lured Jamie Beck Alexander and her family to Duluth. Alarmed by three consecutive devastating wildfire seasons in California, Ms. Alexander, her husband and two young children piled into their camper van and drove to Minnesota in 2020.

Mr. Alexander saw similarities between the small, progressive city and the old city of San Francisco.

“There is real depth between people, deep roots, things that are important for climate resilience,” she said.

Mr. Welch said he defied friends who were crazy about moving to a city known for record-breaking snowfall and icy conditions, with an average of 106 days a year of sub-freezing temperatures. She had the crunchy, pretty city on the hill all hers.

“There are a lot of people here who love where they live and want to protect it,” Welch said of Duluth.

Van Berkel said some cities have embraced the designation as climate havens, but it remains difficult for smaller local governments to find new residents and resources for climate resilience.

Van Berkel works with Duluth and other cities in the Great Lakes region on climate change plans, including welcoming new residents as climate change impacts.

The city of Duluth did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment about how it is preparing to welcome climate immigrants.

Porter said the Great Lakes region and other “climate haven” cities are not currently seeing high levels of migration. But if that changes, many people won’t be ready, he said.

“We need major investment in our communities,” Mr Porter said. “Big investments are needed to ensure that those communities are able to take on the populations that some of the climate migration literature dictates.”

In the city of Duluth, for example, housing availability can be an issue, Alexander said. She said the city has space to create new housing, but there isn’t enough new development for the current population growth. As a result, home prices have risen in the years since she moved there, she said.

Van Berkel said new homes and other developments should also be built with climate change in mind.

“We don’t want to make mistakes that could be costly for our infrastructure when climate change rears its ugly head,” he said.

In 2024, a Category 4 hurricane destroyed more than 2,000 homes and businesses in the Kelsi Lar climate refuge in Asheville, North Carolina.

She was drawn to the city’s warmer climate, restaurants and music scene after a series of devastating wildfire seasons and mud slides near the town of Santa Barbara, California, in 2020.

Before moving, Mr. Lahr did extensive research on the places with the best climates, and Asheville ranked near the top because of its temperature and inland location, which makes it protected from flooding.

But last year, Hurricane Helen plowed through western North Carolina, killing more than 100 people in the state and Lahr’s new hometown of Asheville. Many people have been without power for nearly 20 days and without potable water for over a month.

“Clearly southern Appalachia was not a ‘climate refuge,’” Lahr said.

In Duluth, Alexander said she quickly learned that her family can’t escape climate change either.

In the first summer, the city was hit by the same smoke and poor air quality.

“This was like a really profound joke the universe played on me,” she said. “Unless we address the root causes of climate change, we will always feel like we need to pick up and move.”

She has since moved to Wisconsin for personal reasons, but says she doesn’t regret her first trip to Minnesota. Mr. Lahr doesn’t even regret moving to Asheville.

Although Lahr often misses the ancient forests of California’s Yosemite National Park, where she spends her summers working as a park ranger, a future that could bring more climate disasters may require sacrifices, she said.

“I increasingly think that climate refuges are a myth,” she said. “Everyone needs to assess the risk of where they live and the risk of going from there.”