During the past decade (2010-2020), mounting evidence suggests climate change is increasingly influencing the severity and frequency of natural hazards around the globe. Despite this, in the U.S., local climate policy adoption continues to appear inadequate to prepare for a future climate crisis. We posit that if more Americans personally experience climate-related natural hazards, these experiences will lead them to encourage city officials to adopt climate measures. By using original survey data gathered from city staff in mid- to large-sized U.S. cities and logistic regression analysis, we evaluate how the adoption of local climate adaptation policies is affected by the diversity of recently experienced natural hazards and the level with which different people in a community associate those local hazards with climate change. Results indicate that experiencing a greater number of different local climate-related hazards does not increase the likelihood a city will adopt climate change adaptation policies, nor is it significant if unelected city staff or the general public associate these hazards with climate change. However, when elected officials associate climate change to local natural hazards, the city is more likely to adopt climate adaptation policies, especially if they experience more hazard types. This finding highlights the importance of political leadership in shaping local policy response to climate change.