And that doesn’t even touch on the new year-round fire season normal we have to contend with. Last year was crazy and this year is supposed to be as bad or worse. Every 3rd or 4th pine tree in the hills is beetle kill.
A lot of people are looking to move into mountain communities that are largely water stressed already. Adding more people, with less water, and higher fire danger and it’s going to get ugly.
Upstate New York. Plenty of water, decent farmland (with more farm shares than you can count), and it’s one of the safest places in the U.S. in terms of proximity to natural hazards.
I also assume any decent sized river is going to stay that way for the foreseeable future, and with some industrial grade treatment you can get potable water out of it.
Case in point I live near a river that eventually drains to the Mississippi.
A lot of people are looking to move into mountain communities that are largely water stressed already. Adding more people, with less water, and higher fire danger and it’s going to get ugly.