We met a new neighbor yesterday. While we were taking our daily walk to the beach, a woman who was out walking her dog asked us for directions and our conversion continued as we answered a few more questions about our neighborhood. We aren’t old timers. Our third anniversary in this house is coming up in October. But a couple of years is enough to bet oriented and understand a bit of the layout of our neighborhood. It can be confusing as the streets curve around. When we come from our son’s farm, we make a right turn onto our street and we are going north. But by the time we get to our house the street has turned 90 degrees and is going east-west and when we turn left into our driveway we are once again facing north.

For those who are new to the neighborhood, the confusion isn’t helped by the real estate advertisements. Nearly every house in our neighborhood that comes up for sale features photographs of the roof of the house taken by a drone. The photo faces the ocean, so the water is visible in the background. Just because there is a view of the water from the air above a house doesn’t mean that you can see the ocean from the house, however.

As we talked, we found that the woman had just moved into a house down the street from ours. We watch the for sale signs go up and down in the neighborhood as we walk around so we know which house she has just moved into. We don’t know much of her story, but one of the things she told us as we were standing there is that she was absolutely amazed to be able to go outside for a walk in the middle of the day in summer. Since we are used to walking every day and often walk in the middle of the day we asked where she had lived prior to moving to our neighborhood. She has come from somewhere in Texas. She said that last summer in that town there were a couple of weeks when it got above 110 degrees every day and it remains above 100 degrees even overnight some days. Folks there go from air-conditioned home to air-conditioned car and don’t spend much time out doors in the summer.

It is hard for me to imagine living in such a place. We’ve visited some hot places over the years and I know how hard it is for me to go to sleep if I am too hot. The days are warm here and some days we turn on our air conditioning for a little while to cool our house. One of the luxuries of having solar panels is that they produce more electricity than we consume at this time of the year even if we run our air conditioning. Thus we don’t have increased energy costs if we turn on the AC. However, it cools enough in the evenings that we can turn off the AC and open up our windows. We sit outside on our deck to eat our dinner most days. Most days it is very comfortable to sit on our front porch with our morning cup of tea. Furthermore, this isn’t our rainy season, so we don’t have to wear rain gear to go for our daily walk as is the case for many days in the winter.

Compared to many places around the world we have very temperate climate. Not only does it not get too hot here in the summer, it doesn’t get too cold in the winter. We see a little snow and sometimes it will snow enough to make a snow man before it melts, but locals don’t own show shovels. For the most part people just wait for the snow to melt when it falls. Since we’ve lived here the snow hasn’t ever lingered for more than a couple of days. I own winter gear from living in South Dakota that remains in my closet because I don’t need to dress that warmly here.

We did not move to this home because of the weather. We moved to be close to our son and his family. The weather is a bonus. There have even been a few times when I missed the sunny skies of South Dakota during a stretch of cloudy days. I even miss having a good blizzard, though any amount of snow causes folks to stay home around here. The schools here have more snow days than has been the case in any other place we have lived despite there being a lot less snow here.

I don’t know much of the story of the neighbor we met yesterday, but it strikes me that she is among what I suspect will be a continuing trend in years to come. People moving to our area because of the temperate weather and moving away from places that once were comfortable but have become too warm because of global warming. It isn’t just the summer temperatures that create climate refugees. People who have lost their homes to flooding or wildfire may seek to relocate to places with lower risks of those dangers.

There are more people in the world than ever before and the increase of human population continues to accelerate. All of those people are not spread evenly across the globe. People have long clustered together in cities. With the rise of remote working people may choose to live a bit more distant from urban centers. However, the majority of the people in the world continue to live on coasts near the water.

Our entire region is experiencing a shortage of houses. There are more people than there are houses. This drives the price up and there is an increasing population of people who have no home to call their own. This makes a place, like ours, where one can survive outdoors without freezing and avoid becoming ill from excessive heat, desirable.

More climate refugees are headed our way. Not every one will find an affordable place to live. It remains to be seen how deep the influx of people will change our communities, but change is certain. Conversations like we had yesterday will become more common. I hope we can continue to be welcoming and open to new people as they arrive.