Lubbock, TX

Lubbock's heat score of 72 sits at the 83rd national percentile—the highest-ranked hazard in a market that otherwise scores well below the national extreme tiers for flood and wildfire. The 2023 West Texas heat and drought cycle extended triple-digit conditions long enough to push cooling costs and outdoor exposure into the foreground for buyers who had planned around the city's reputation for dry, moderate weather. The 2014 flash flooding event—caused by short-duration intense thunderstorms—produced urban flooding despite Lubbock's dry-climate setting, demonstrating that High Plains drainage has specific failure modes under concentrated rainfall. What we noticed: the performance gap between older Downtown and Central Lubbock housing stock and newer Southwest Lubbock subdivisions is primarily a cooling-efficiency story. Homes built before modern energy standards carry materially higher summer operating costs. Hail-related roof wear is a recurring insurance issue across all Lubbock submarkets—far more common as an actual claims driver than the flood or wildfire scores might suggest. Annual premiums range from $1,400 to $2,900—among the lowest in this dataset—which accurately reflects the absence of coastal, seismic, or extreme wildfire exposure. But premium level is not the same as total cost: heat adaptation, power backup consideration, and hail-resilient roofing are practical buyer expenditures that the insurance line does not capture. Northwest Lubbock's rapid growth corridor has stretched drainage assumptions in some areas. Flood at the 40th national percentile and wildfire at the 33rd are genuine low-concern hazards here. Lubbock is not a headline climate-risk market—but dismissing it as risk-free misses the heat and severe-weather operating costs that accrue quietly across every ownership year.

— Open Data Collective