Canadian snowbirds watch anxiously as Florida hurricanes create more climate refugees

The hurricanes that rendered large parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast left veteran NBC meteorologist and hurricane specialist John Morales at a loss, as he broke down on live television while reporting on Milton's rapid intensification, calling it “horrific”. 

He was scared.

Morales, who normally tries to report on the weather dispassionately, sprinkling in facts around climate change when viewers need to understand the impacts, revealed a rare personal side of the fear he feels, the type of unique perspective of someone who knows all too well what the consequences of our changing atmosphere means for people.

The material cost of damage from Hurricane Milton and Helene is estimated to be at least $100 billion, but that figure mainly accounts for the loss or destruction of property. The broader economic costs will ripple far beyond that amount.

For Canadians, millions of snowbirds are also trying to make difficult predictions about the consequences of climate change. 

D. Scott Munro, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto Mississauga, has been an expert in climatology and climate change for nearly five decades. Throughout his career, he has witnessed numerous natural disasters, but the recent events in Florida resonate personally with him. For over a decade, he spent time in the state with his parents, who were snowbirds, escaping the Canadian winter from November to April.

As an educator, Munro often took his students to Florida in February for research, noting it was “a nice time of the year… no bugs, not too hot,” providing the perfect getaway from the cold, snowy winters of Canada.

While his parents rented a trailer to enjoy the tropical climate of Florida, paradise for the four million Canadians who visit the state each year, thousands of residents from Peel and Niagara have chosen to buy their own property in the state over the years. 

An image from space this week as Hurricane Milton moved toward Florida's Gulf Coast.

(NASA) 

According to a recent National Association of Realtors (NAR) survey, Canadians now represent the largest group of foreign buyers in the U.S., spending $5.9 billion on real estate from April 2023 to March 2024—making up 13 percent of all foreign purchases in Florida—while currently there are more than 500,000 Canadian homeowners in the state.

But for many current owners and prospective ones, a sinking sense of doubt about the future deepens with each passing hurricane season.  

“There’s a lot of uncertainty about the damage,” Stephen Fine, President of Snowbird Advisor, told The Pointer. He noted that one of his colleagues who owns property in Sarasota, Florida, is worried about the possible damage she will have to face when she assesses the impact of Hurricane Milton on her property.

Fine emphasized that home insurance is “already a challenge in Florida due to natural disasters,” with many insurance providers exiting the market, leading to rising prices and fewer options for homebuyers.

“It is going to be a consideration for people who currently own property there, and for people who are considering buying property there.” 

The average insurance premium for a home in Florida is predicted to be $16,500 (Cdn) by the end of this year. That is about five times the national average in the U.S. and in areas of the state more prone to natural disasters, the figures will be even higher.

“Some insurance companies have simply stopped operating in Florida,” Snowbird Advisor warns on its website. “Others have increased their rates significantly and some will no longer offer flood insurance in certain areas.”

The Canadian Snowbird Association has similar grim news. “This is a difficult situation affecting many snowbirds in Florida, and elsewhere for that matter. Insurance losses suffered last year, and in many prior years, have forced several insurance companies out of the market. Hurricanes, floods and raging fires seem to be a normal occurrence now.”

The organization says that a company called Citizens Property Insurance Corporation may be the only remaining option for Canadians who own property in Florida, but recommends contacting local providers to ask if they will insure foreign property owners, and if flood damage would be included. 

Because homes do not typically have basements, losses from flood damage in areas of homes that are more valuable can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, insurance advocacy groups in Florida have pointed out. 

For Rohan Kapoor, it is a dizzying reality. The Brampton resident shared that he was advised to explore as many options as possible in Florida before making his first foreign property purchase for his aging parents. “I want my parents to enjoy their retirement in a warm place where they can enjoy the beach but given the recent hurricanes and the fluctuations in insurance rates, I am considering other options.” 

But those options are shriveling up. 

Retired doctors Melissa and Guy Hoagland have been featured in U.S. media after they left California a few years ago due to rising sea levels near their retirement home and the increased threat of wildfires and mudslides. They moved to Florida, seeking a safe coastal retreat, but soon decided due to impacts of climate change that it was no longer viable. In 2022 they uprooted once again, to Asheville, North Carolina, after their own research determined it was relatively protected from a range of impacts caused by climate change, including severe heat. 

Two weeks ago the community was all but destroyed by massive flooding caused by Hurricane Helene. 

More and more people already in their golden years and those thinking about where they want to spend their upcoming retirement, describe themselves as climate refugees, wanting to leave colder winter weather behind, but suddenly running out of options. Years of financial planning and thinking about enjoying life down south have now been thrown up in the air.  

The challenges extend beyond property owners to those like Munro’s parents who travel to Florida in recreational vehicles (RVs) or rent homes. Climate change “reinforces that people who rent for the winter should consider getting vacation rental, trip cancellation and interruption insurance,” Fine suggested. 

He receives numerous inquiries from individuals like Kapoor seeking alternatives to Florida. Many are now considering destinations such as Arizona, California, and more recently popular landing places such as Texas, the Carolinas and Hawaii.

But as the latest storms have shown, inland communities are also at risk of extreme weather due to climate change and places like Arizona and Texas are becoming less of an option due to difficult temperatures even in the months of November, February and March, leaving snowbirds with a narrowing window in the calendar to live comfortably away from home. 

Some might see these as the problems of privilege, impacts of climate change on those fortunate enough to consider second properties or long winter getaways. But snowbird groups point out that for many, there are significant health concerns that motivate them to seek out alternatives.

Either way, more and more Canadians are being impacted by climate change, even as they contribute to the worsening reality.

A study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) shows both Hurricane Helene and Milton were driven and sustained by the very high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf, shown to have been made 400 to 800 times more likely by climate change.

Milton began as a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico on October 5 and rapidly escalated to tropical storm status before experiencing explosive intensification to a high Category 5 Hurricane between October 6 and 7, according to NASA.

Australians call storms like these Willy-Willys or “storms to be feared,” Munro said while explaining that the pressure drop associated with such storms is “extreme”, enabling them to develop rapidly.

To put this into context, he notes that by the time a storm reaches Category 4, wind speeds exceed 200 kilometres per hour. “These winds are powerful enough to drive a pole or a piece of wood straight through the trunk of a tree.” 

Munro points out that while the frequency of hurricanes has remained relatively stable over the past century, the past 50 years have seen them intensifying at a much quicker rate.

Milton intensifying into a category 5 hurricane.

(U.S. National Hurricane Center/X)

The WWA study shows that climate change has warmed temperatures by 1.3 degrees Celsius due to fossil fuel combustion, increasing both the frequency and intensity of such severe rainfall events. Milton’s damage due to such heavy amounts of rain, a hard-to-fathom 19 inches in St. Petersburg, is being described as the effect of a once-in-a-thousand-year storm. 

To put that number into perspective, the heaviest rainfall which turned parts of Mississauga into an urban lake between August 17 and 18, was about one-third of what fell in St. Petersburg. 

Mississauga's Dixie and Dundas area after flooding in August. 

(Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services/X)

These types of storms and extreme weather events, climate scientists point out, are happening across many parts of North America and other areas around the world, due to the impacts of human created carbon emissions, which researchers have been warning about for decades. 

“If fossil fuel consumption continues to drive global warming to 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, these extreme rainfall events could become 15-25 percent more likely,” the WWA study highlights.

According to the WWA, climate change has led to a 150 percent increase in storms similar to Helene, with wind speeds that are 11 percent stronger.

The study highlighted that the potential intensity of such storms has increased 18-fold, and the sea surface temperatures that create these dynamics along their path have become 200-500 times more likely due to fossil fuel emissions.

“For the second time in as many weeks, lives will be lost and upended by yet another hurricane supercharged by fossil fuel-driven climate change,” John Noël, Greenpeace USA Senior Climate Campaigner said while blaming oil and gas corporations for this “wreckage”.

“With damage from Hurricane Helene already estimated at a quarter of a trillion dollars and Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida, this could be the costliest hurricane season in history,” Noël added.

Loss of coastal lands due to sea-level rise and the grave impacts of waters along Florida’s coast that are already as much as a foot higher than what they were just a few decades ago, have led to many insurance companies pulling out of large markets completely, as their own experts predict the effects of climate change.

As one person in Florida interviewed last week said, “If the insurance companies don’t want to be here anymore because they figure there’s no money to be made, maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

Meanwhile, Munro warns that to study the noticeable impact of climate change on weather conditions, it is imperative to look at long term patterns. 

“But that's what's so challenging about addressing climate change: by the time you have the evidence to act, you’re already 50 years past the point where action was necessary.” 

For many snowbirds, they don’t have the luxury of seeing into the future, while they stare at uncertainty now.

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