Seattle Listed As One Of The Best Cities To Handle Climate Change

SEATTLE — Ask anyone why they live in Western Washington and they'll almost certainly mention our lush forests, clear waterways and temperate climate (if you can handle some rain, that is). Well, turns out those three things also make Seattle and the Puget Sound region in general a great place to live if you want to avoid some of the impacts of climate change.

According to a recent ranking from Policygenius of the top 50 largest urban areas in the United States, Seattle is actually the second most climate resilient city in the nation, only beat out by San Francisco. Researchers say they reached that conclusion by weighing a couple of key factors, including heat and humidity, flooding and sea levels, climate-related disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, air quality, social vulnerability — city’s susceptibility to death, injury, and disruption from weather events — and community resilience, how well the community has worked to adapt to recent changes.

Ultimately, the researchers ranked the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro highly because Western Washington has a temperate climate, with few days of extreme heat or humidity. Our soggy weather also means that local wildfire risks are low, even if we do feel the brunt of smoke flowing in from California or eastern Washington.

The one thing holding Puget Sound back is flooding: just under ten percent of Puget Sound properties are expected to be in 100-year flood zones by 2050. Rising sea levels are predicted to impact about 0.35 percent of local properties, but that's actually below the national average of 1.35 percent.

Here are Policygenius' five best cities for climate change:

1. San Francisco, CA
2. Seattle, WA
3. Columbus, OH
4. Minneapolis, MN
5. Baltimore, MD

Honorable mention goes to our neighbors to the south in Portland, Oregon, which clocked in at 7th place.

While Seattle, Tacoma and the rest of Puget Sound will be relatively ready to adapt to the changing climate, some cities will have a much harder time of it. Texas, for example, is expected to say 85 days of extreme heat per year by 2050. Florida has it even worse, because of high winds, low-lying land and high heat, as you'll see below.

Here are Policygenius' five worst cities for climate change:

1. Houston, TX
2. Miami, FL
3. Tampa, FL
4. Jacksonville, FL
5. Orlando, FL

Here on the West Coast the least-prepared city is Los Angeles, which came in seventh because of its low air quality propensity for wildfires.

>> Read the full report from Policygenius.