The City That Never Heats: The Unexpected Cool-Climate, Hot Market Metro

Large swaths of the United States have had to deal with sweltering heat waves since March of this year. And this week, from Salt Lake City to Boston, people are living under extreme heat warnings once again.

But one metro area is almost guaranteed to stay cool, at least relative to other major cities: Buffalo, NY, the only major U.S. city in the Lower 48 to never hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Its location on the eastern shore of Lake Erie gives it a built-in air conditioner that has, so far, protected it from increasingly severe summer weather. 

Those who look to Buffalo as the answer to their climate prayers should know that experts don’t expect Buffalo to remain unaffected by climate change. But looking at what keeps Buffalo cool now, and what it’s doing to hold onto that advantage, can offer homeowners elsewhere some inspiration for investing in resilience of their own, rather than moving to escape their own climate concerns.

What keeps Buffalo cool? 

For many people, when they think of Buffalo, they think of the Bills, chicken wings, and snow. The same geographical perks that keep Buffalo cool in the summer also gives it massive snowfalls in the winter—perfect weather for watching football and eating wings, albeit inside.

But in a warming climate, that’s a trade-off that some are willing to take. 

“We live in a special place,” says Ryan McPherson, the chief sustainability officer at the University of Buffalo. “Being situated as we are in the Great Lakes, and specifically a major metropolitan area on the eastern edge of the Great Lakes, really creates a more temperate and stable cooling system.”

McPherson’s work puts him at the center of Buffalo’s conversations about climate adaptation. This gives him some unique insight into other aspects of Buffalo that make it more livable during the warm months. 

“We have an amazing park system, and a lot of tree canopy cover in the city … and nature-based climate solutions not only mitigate carbon, but provide that cooling and shading that is so important in the middle of the summer. The fact that we’re fairly north is helpful as well,” he says.

Is Buffalo’s edge sustainable?

Buffalo has gotten a lot of press lately with words like “climate haven” and promises of climate relief in the headlines. Even Buffalo’s former mayor, Byron W. Brown, once declared the city a “climate refuge.” 

It’s a tempting pitch, if you have the resources to act on it: Move to Buffalo, and let geography do the rest.

But McPherson is quick to warn that no place is totally safe from climate change.

“I always get a little queasy when we use the term ‘climate haven’ … what we look at in the science is that there is no way to escape our kind of trajectory on that,” he says. “Do I think that we’re going to hit 100 degrees? Unfortunately, I do think that at some point we will. I think our pace of increase in temperature is either going to be below, at, or the same as other places.”

In addition, extreme heat is not the only factor to take into account when considering climate change. Buffalo was not immune to 2023’s immense Canadian wildfire smoke, and increasingly heavy rain events can strain the city’s ability to filter excess water out. 

The insurance picture

One place Buffalo’s short-term edge is already showing up: the insurance marketplace.

“In high-risk states like Florida, California and parts of coastal Texas, we’re seeing changes in pricing, but we’re also seeing reduced carrier appetite, stricter underwriting, higher deductibles, and in some cases, fewer insurance options available altogether,” says Diane Delaney, the executive director of the Private Risk Management Association. “That’s making it more challenging for homeowners to secure the coverage they need, particularly for higher-value properties.”

The numbers bear this out: According to Insurify, the average annual premium for a $300,000 dwelling and a $1,000 deductible in Buffalo is $1,285. Compare that to $2,364 in Los Angeles and a whopping $14,520 in Miami. Even compared to another Great Lakes city, Cleveland, where the premium is $1,608, Buffalo has an edge. 

Delaney’s view, however, mirrors that of McPherson: Though parts of the Great Lakes and Northeast have more stable insurance markets, they are not immune in a blanket sense. 

“I don’t think any region can be considered completely insulated anymore,” Delaney says. “Weather patterns are changing, and we’re seeing events like inland flooding and unexpected wildfires in places that historically weren’t viewed as high risk.”

Seek places actively investing in resilience

If you ask McPherson, Buffalo’s current and future place as a “climate harbor”—his preferred term—isn’t just about luck. The University of Buffalo and the greater city are looking to tap further into thermal energy networks—using the earth to both heat up and cool the city down with lower emissions. 

“That type of infrastructure are the types of things that I think are really important for cities to design now, because the temperature is not going down,” he says. 

But you don’t need to move to Buffalo to operate with this mindset. Delaney says that insurers are looking “much more closely at an individual property than they did even a few years ago” in an effort to factor resilience into their underwriting. 

“They are evaluating factors like construction quality, defensible space, roof condition, mitigation efforts, and other resilience measures, rather than relying solely on a ZIP code or broad geographic assumptions,” says Delaney.

According to Delaney, for homeowners, that’s an important shift. Investing in resilience can influence your home’s insurability, pricing, and options available in the marketplace, no matter where you put down roots.