purchasing winter home in Florida & sea level rising

[raaizin]

Wife and I are retired I am 59 will be 60 in May she is 57 live in NJ. We have been retired for 2 years and have been to Florida the last 2 winters for about a month. We would like to stay there 3-4 months going foward. Thinking of purchasing a winter home in the West Palm Beach maybe PGA National area not on the water. I am a little concerned with climate change and sea level rise. Thinking of buying in a couple of years. I would like some input from the good people here. We have 2.5 mil in 401k and 110k in pensions with full survivor benefits. Primary house paid off. I figure I would collect SS @ 62 which could pay for most of the house. Wife could delay hers if she chose to

 

[ShokWaveRider]

We live in NE Florida, we are not worried at all in anything affecting our home, which is high and dry, on our lifetime. We are walking distance from the beach.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

There are maps you can look at to see what areas scientists predict will be underwater in 20 or more years. Here is one I picked at random - https://sls.geoplan.ufl.edu/beta/viewer/

 

[ShokWaveRider]

There are maps you can look at to see what areas scientist predict will be underwater in 20 or more years. Here is one I picked at random - https://sls.geoplan.ufl.edu/beta/viewer/

Thanks, I just did our county out to 2060 and we are OK. Past that we do not care.

 

[Scrapr]

We live in NE Florida, we are not worried at all in anything affecting our home, which is high and dry, on our lifetime. We are walking distance from the beach.

any concern with more hurricanes & storms? Louisiana has been getting battered. Have we ever gone into the second round of named storms? I'm not close but don't remember going into the Greek naming mode. Could this turn onto the Florida side one year?

*wiki says this is the 2nd time we've gone Greek. (2005)

 

[Dtail]

any concern with more hurricanes & storms? Louisiana has been getting battered. Have we ever gone into the second round of named storms? I'm not close but don't remember going into the Greek naming mode. Could this turn onto the Florida side one year?

*wiki says this is the 2nd time we've gone Greek. (2005)

Yup, this year so far has the 2nd most named storms with 1.5 months to go.
Florida has mostly been spared so far. In 2004/2005, Florida was hit hard.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

any concern with more hurricanes & storms? Louisiana has been getting battered. Have we ever gone into the second round of named storms? I'm not close but don't remember going into the Greek naming mode. Could this turn onto the Florida side one year?

*wiki says this is the 2nd time we've gone Greek. (2005)

Not really, we are in the big bend of the East Coast, It is NC and SC and above that get pounded. We do get the outer bands and when we do they are the West side not the treacherous east side. Put it this way we have been pretty lucky and we have never evacuated. We live walking distance from the beach and intend on doing so for years to come.

Now the South Coast West of Florida's Western Big bend all the way to the Mexican Border is a different story. Wild horses could not convince us to move there. YMMV

 

[Montecfo]

any concern with more hurricanes & storms? Louisiana has been getting battered. Have we ever gone into the second round of named storms? I'm not close but don't remember going into the Greek naming mode. Could this turn onto the Florida side one year?

*wiki says this is the 2nd time we've gone Greek. (2005)

Hurricanes run in cycles. Just as 2005 meant little relative to the next decade plus, I suspect this year's busier than usual season will mean little for the next few.

And it is easy to forget that no major hurricanes made landfall on the US mainland from Hurricane Wilma in 2005 till Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and this was the longest such stretch since record keeping of such things began.

 

[RAE]

any concern with more hurricanes & storms? Louisiana has been getting battered. Have we ever gone into the second round of named storms? I'm not close but don't remember going into the Greek naming mode. Could this turn onto the Florida side one year?

*wiki says this is the 2nd time we've gone Greek. (2005)

We have a winter home in Florida (Gulf Coast), and I am more concerned about hurricane damage (over the short-term, 5-10 years or so) than I am about sea level rise. There have always been hurricanes, but the science seems to indicate that climate change is resulting in stronger hurricanes in recent years. The frequency of hurricanes has not changed that much, but those that do occur tend to be stronger, and some tend to stall out, resulting in flooding due to heavy precipitation (see article at link below). I love our house down there, and I love the FL. weather during the winter months, so I am not willing to sell and spend the winters up north - but I do watch the storm reports closely during hurricane season, and we have done some reinforcing of our house (impact-resistant windows, etc) to try to help protect our house, should a hurricane hit our area.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ore-storms-to-rapidly-intensify-as-delta-did/

 

[Bigdawg]

The frequency of hurricanes has not changed that much, but those that do occur tend to be stronger, and some tend to stall out, resulting in flooding due to heavy precipitation (see article at link below).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ore-storms-to-rapidly-intensify-as-delta-did/

Climate Change MAY Cause More Storms to Rapidly Intensify as Delta Did
A warming climate is not expected to have much effect on the number of storms, but those that do form MAY be stronger

I love it when science articles use the word "may". And I MAY win the lottery. If I played.

 

[RAE]

I love it when science articles use the word "may". And I MAY win the lottery. If I played.

Well, that's the way science works. Science neither proves nor disproves. It accepts or rejects ideas based on supporting and refuting evidence, but may revise those conclusions if warranted by new evidence or perspectives.

At this point, the data seems to indicate that climate change is a contributing factor to the rapid intensification of hurricanes in recent years. Science does not prove that, but there is evidence that it is likely, at least at this point. You can ignore the science if you think the conclusion is flawed for some reason - but to ignore it because of the use of the word "may" is a misunderstanding of how science works.

 

[Zathras]

If someone tells you with certainty that something WILL happen, they are conning you.
Scientists are very conservative in stating things. In the cases of actual scientific papers they list out what odds they attribute to each category (may, likely, most likely, etc).