Unprecedented Heat From March Still Has Climatologists, Others, Losing Sleep At Night, But It's All A Scary Sign Of The Times

March was so hot in the western and central U.S. was so
extreme it's still keeping climatologists up at night.
These kinds of "unprecedented" hot spells and 
extremes are now becoming regular occurrences
in this age of climate change. 

There's patches of record warmth remaining in the United States as we make our way through the first week of April, but the extreme, whackadoodle heat of March has subsided. 

Scientists are still agog from March, which is easily going down in history as among the most extreme, over the top, seemingly impossible climate-related events hot spells ever seen.  The heat wave completely rewrote the March weather record books in the western and central U.S. 

It was the kind of event that keeps climatologists up at night.  Especially since these "impossible" events are coming along in a steady stream now. Each one bigger than the last. And each one potentially more deadly. 

We're lucky this one hit in March, months before summer. Had it happened in July, who knows how many deaths would have been created by just the hot days themselves? Even so, the heat set the stage for a potential summer of out-of-control wildfires and deep water shortages. 

Already, fires are burning months before they should. A raging wildfire threatened homes in Moreno Valley , California last week. It was the kind of fire you see in parched late summer and early autumn and not moist March. But the rules have changed. March is the new summer, apparently.  

Nebraska just experienced their largest wildfires in history, burning an area larger than Rhode Island. 

And we've probably only just begun with the fires.

THE EXTREME MARCH HEAT

It's hard to know where even to begin with the accounting for March's heat. 

AccuWeather gives just a glimpse of the breadth of the March heat wave: 

 "During the unprecedented mid-March heat waves in the central and western United States, more than 8,200 daily records and more than 2,000 monthly records were broken at weather stations across the West."

Incredibly, 17 states set new March record highs.  And these are large western and central states, not smaller Eastern states where it's a bit easier to accumulate numerous record highs. Many of these states broke monthly record highs, only to have those records broken in subsequent days. 

The nation saw its hottest March temperature on record at 112 degrees. It came close to setting the April national record of 113 degrees.

No fewer than 16 western cities not only broke their all-time highs for the month of March, they also broke or tied the mark for April, which is beyond insane. 

On March 19 alone, nearly half of the 900 or so long term U.S.. weather stations in the Global Historical Climatological Network set or tied daily record highs. 

More than four dozen major reporting stations with data since at least the 1960s had their warmest March in history.  Major cities that had their warmest March on record, - most of them by a wide margin - include Dallas, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. 

Once all the numbers are crunched, it looks like Colorado will end up with a March that was three or four degrees warmer than any other in the past 130 years or so. For a state to break its statewide record for hottest March by a degree is wild. By three degrees ----there's no words for it. 

We still don't have confirmation as to whether March, 2026, is the nation's hottest on record. That will come in a week or two. But it was at the very least as warm as what was considered the impossibly hot March of 2012.

CHAIN OF EXTREMES 

Climate change doesn't just warm up the world uniformly. It sets traps. Springs surprises. 

As Yale Climate Connections notes: 

"Since climate change is also fundamentally disrupting atmospheric circulation patterns, we now have mega-unprecedented extreme events occurring with regularity. These circulation changes allow the biggest regional and local heat extremes to intensify by a much larger margin than the roughly 1.4 degrees Celsius increase in average global temperature since preindustrial times."

Honestly, climate change contributes to new extremes every weeks, or so it seems. But the standouts - the weather events that make climatologists and other scientists deeply worry about the future  - seemed to begin almost exactly 14 years prior to this March's heat.

In March, 2012 most of the heat focused on the central and eastern United States.  Thousands of daily record highs were set, as were hundreds of all time record highs for March.  Among those thousands of record highs, nearly four dozen were broken by at least 22 degrees, which is beyond insane. Four record highs were smashed by 30 degrees. In a handful of cases, the low temperature on a particular date on March 12 was warmer than the record high.

 "An initial assessment led by Martin Hourlong at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories concede that human-produced warming likely contributed on the order of 5% to 10% of the magnitude the heat woven March 12-23, 2012, The report added: "the probability of heat waves is growing as (greenhouse gas)-induced warming continues to progress," notes Yale Climate Connections. 

Still, we figured we wouldn't see another March, 2012 in our lifetimes again. Until we did.

The March heat of 2012 came at the tail end of a La Nina, and led to an extreme, punishing drought across the nation's middle that summer.  We're in the same situation now. It might not be just the western mountains that are running out of water. 

Much of the central and southern Plains are already in serious drought. Will this key crop growing area further dry out? There's already plenty of other stresses out there with food production - political instability, tariffs, war, a feckless president.  

We are set up for a rough summer, and March probably just made it much, much more rough. 

WATER SHORTAGES?

Colorado's snow pack ended the month at less than a quarter of average. Eighty-nine of 94 snow pack measuring stations were at record lows by the end of March. 

It's not just Colorado. It's virtually all of the West. Per the Guardian: 

'This year is on a whole other level.' say Dr. Russ Schumacher, a Colorado State University climatologist, speaking about the intense heat that began rapidly melting the already sparse snowpack in March. 'Seeing this year so far below any of the other years we have data for is very concerning."

On April 1, media went out to join California water officials to take a measurement of the water content of snow at a spot in the Sierra Nevada. Normally, the group would be standing on five feet of snow. This time, they were standing on a muddy field, flecked with melting remains of snow patches. 

Snow water equivalent is a measurement is the amount of water of that would melt out of the snow that's still on the ground.  This figure is now terrifying throughout the West. 

The overall snow water equivalent in the Sierra Nevada on April 1 was just 18 percent of average for this time of year.  In the Great Basin, snow water equivalent was just 16 percent of normal. In the lower Colorado River basin area, including most of Arizona and Nevada, it was 10 percent. The Rio Grande, which covers New Mexico, Texas and Colorado was at 8 percent. 

Because of a record warm winter, the snow pack was far below normal before March arrived. Everyone hoped for a "March Miracle," as some bad years in the past were relieved by cold, stormy Marches. Not this year. Not by a long shot.

If this were just one bad year, we'd be OK. But the six lowest April 1 snowpacks in California have happened since 2007. The state thought it was finally catching a break in January as it fully emerged from drought for the first time since in a quarter century. 

Reservoirs are pretty full in California, thanks to warm rains in recent winters that filled them even though the state couldn't build a decent snowpack. So at least for this year, the problem for most of that state would be intense wildfires but not necessarily widespread water shortages. 

Elsewhere, things are not nearly so serene. 

In the Colorado basin, Lake Mead is 25 percent full. Lake Powell was only 33 percent or so full at last check. Both lakes usually rise somewhat in the spring due to snow melt. It doesn't look like that's really happening this year. 

Water managers area already urging conservation in the West. 

Salt Lake City has called on residents and businesses to start conserving now, with a goal of cutting overall water usage by 10 percent, Also, as the Guardian reports:

"Across Colorado, there are local orders that list lawn watering, and in Wyoming, residents were warned that full restrictions on outdoor irrigation could come come as early as May."

Farmers and ranchers across the West are also having to make hard decisions and big adjustments with smaller allocations of water and a recognition that supplies will be strained. 

TIMING

What if a heat dome like the one we just saw in March hit during the middle of summer? And hit in a place not accustomed to extreme heat. 

We found out in late June and early July, 2021 when an unprecedented - here's that word again - intense, heat settled into southwestern Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

 All-time heat records in the Pacific Northwest were not just broken, they were obliterated. Portland Oregon reached 116 degrees. Salem, Oregon was 117 degrees. Rainy, cool Seattle reached 108 degrees.

The heat of 2021 was even more punishing in British Columbia, Canada. On June 29, 2021, the town of Lytton, British Columbia reached 121 degrees, the hottest temperature ever recorded anywhere in Canada. By a long shot. Before this heat wave, the hottest it had gotten anywhere in Canada was 113 degrees back in the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. 

The next day, Lytton burned down in a massive wildfire brought on by the scorching heat and drought. 

The 2021 heat wave is estimated to have caused at least 1,400 deaths in Canada and the U.S. 

What if a heat dome like that in 2021 settled into the heavily populated eastern United States and southeastern Canada? And what if it lasted a month, not a week? Nobody is prepared for such a nightmare. 

However, we'll find out soon enough. Perhaps this summer. Or the next. And it won't be pretty. 

 

ICE Barbie Is Out At DHS; But I'm Not Optimistic About How Replacement Will Manage FEMA

ICE Barbie is out, and this guy, Markwayne Mullin is
nominated as the new Secretary of Homeland Security.
That position also oversees FEMA. It's unclear how
he'll do as that agency deals with an increasing
number of disasters, some of them climate-
related. These might be famous last words
but he likely can't do a worse job than
Kristi "ICE Barbie" Noem. 

As I'm sure you heard on the news, Donald Trump finally had enough and is firing Department of Homeland Secretary Kristi "ICE Barbie" Noem and is going to replace her with a dude named Markwayne Mullin. 

Mullin is a Republican U.S. Senator from Oklahoma and is definitely right up Trump's ally. 

Trump's statement was "A MAGA Warrior, and former undefeated professional MMA fighter, Markwayne truly gets along well with people and knows the Wisdom an Courage required to Advance our America First Agenda."

Part of the DHS Secretary's job is overseeing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is why this news story landed in a weather and climate blog.

With an ever rising tide of weather and climate calamities, FEMA's role is incredibly important in helping people recover from those disasters. The nation's spring severe weather and tornado season this year appears to be gearing up to start literally today and tomorrow with a likely significant severe weather outbreak. 

Oklahoma is in the path of these storms, so I suppose Mullin will be at least a little sympathetic if the storms get too bad.

ICE BARBIE'S DEPARTURE

I'm definitely getting a "Ding dong the witch is dead" vibe coming from both Democrats and Republicans in Washington now that ICE Barbie is headed out the door. 

FEMA mismanagement was the least of the problems people had with Noem. She oversaw the siege of Minnesota by ICE agents this winter. Two border security officers shot and killed two American citizens. Noem lied about those deaths, and oversaw the chaos in Minneapolis and other cities in the past year, Chicago, Charlotte and Los Angeles and others come to mind.  

Pretty much everybody, including Trump, was getting more and more dissatisfied with ICE Barbie. It appears what finally drove Trump to dump Noem was all about him, of course. It always is.  

ICE Barbie testified in front of U.S. Senate and House committees this week and it did not go well.  The part that Trump didn't like, according to NBC News were her answers regarding her role in a $220 million ad campaign encouraging immigrants to self-deport. 

Funding for the ad campaign seemed shady, as is usual in this administration, but Trump was described as "pissed" that Noem said during the hearing that Trump new about her decision to approve the ads.

Speaking of pissed, that can describe likely thousands of disaster victims.  The FEMA work force is decimated, and the Trump administration is still trying to find ways to either get rid of the agency or gut it into near-nothingness. 

Even GOP political were annoyed by ICE Barbie's micromanaging, which seriously delays help for disaster victims. Barbie decreed that she must personally approve each expenditure amounting to more than $100,000. As you can imagine that created huge bottlenecks in getting help to people who lost their homes or livelihoods to extreme weather. 

Noem's interference with FEMA payments might have violated the law. 

ICE Barbie has also advocated eliminating or severely downsizing FEMA. 

WHAT ABOUT MARKWAYNE?

All eyes of course remain on immigration agencies and their lawless campaign to rid the U.S. of non-whites. But FEMA is also an important part of the DHS Secretary's oversight role. 

Frankly, I couldn't find much on Mullin or how he would deal with FEMA and disaster relief. I found a Fox News interview with Mullen in the autumn of 2024 where he said it's the neighbors that help during calamities like Hurricane Helene, and the response if there is any is too bureaucratic.

Reading between the lines, it felt to me like Mullin was advocating a far smaller role for FEMA rather than reforming its bureaucracy, which certainly needed and still needs reform. 

Climate change is driving many of our disasters, and Mullin's record there isn't great, to say the least. He has a 100 percent rating from Independent Petroleum Association of America. He was opposed to the Biden administration's rejoining of the Paris Climate Agreement, and presumably approved of Trump's decision to leave it. 

There is a bipartisan effort in Congress to take FEMA out of the control of DHS and make it an independent agency. It really has withered every since it was put under the DHS purview in the early 2000s.

Mullin needs Senate confirmation before he gets the job, though he could serve as "acting secretary" if confirmation doesn't happen by the end of the month. 

I've found Mullin to be a jerk at times on the Sunday morning news talk shows. But I can't picture him mugging for the cameras and cosplaying like ICE Barbie did all the time. I'll hope that he'll at least be a better administrator that Noem.

In interviews today, Mullin and both GOP and Democratic Congress creatures pledged to play nice during the confirmation process. Let's see how that turns out.  

Rogue Private Companies Trying To Stop Climate Change In Potentially Dangerous, Risky Ways

A company called Make Sunsets wants to pump 
sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to blunt
climate change. Sounds good, but a lot 
can go wrong with this idea. 

You can combat climate change, at least a little, for just $1.00.  The problem is, that $1 to fight climate change might backfire enough to make climate change seem like a trifle. 

The dollar would go to a private company called Make Sunsets. As the Washington Post explains:

"Your dollar will pay for founder Luke Iseman to drive a Winnebago RV into the hills half an hour outside Saratoga, California, to release a balloon loaded with sulfur dioxide, an air pollutant normally spewed by volcanic eruptions. He and his 1,000 paying customers hope the balloon will burst in the stratosphere, releasing particles that will block sunlight and cool the planet."

Of course, just one of those little balloons won't have any effect on climate change. Make Sunsets has released just over 240 pounds of sulfur dioxide this year. You need to release millions of tons of that chemical every year to change global temperatures. 

For instance, in 1991, the Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted in what was easily among the biggest eruptions in a century. It released 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.  

That eruption dropped global temperatures by about 1 degree Fahrenheit for nearly two years. But those cooler temperatures were still above the 20th century average. 

Still, as the WaPo points out, private businesses are diving into the idea of blocking the sun through chemicals. "Make Sunsets has raised more than $1 million from investors and sold more than $100,000 worth of 'cooling credits' to customers this fall. A better-funded competitor, Stardust, has raised $75 million to develop a more sophisticated geo engineering method it says will be ready to launch by the end of the decade- although its founders vow they won't deploy their technology unless a government hires them to do so." 

These companies are jumping in because they say scientists and governments are too slow and plodding with possible solutions to climate change. So they want to speed it up. Reading between the lines, these companies want to make a pile of money and fast.  

There is reason why these scientists and governments are so "slow and plodding." 

The technologies these companies are playing with could have really bad unintended consequences, like altering global weather patterns in ways that could be even more dangerous than climate change. These tech ideas could increase air pollution and cancer rates.

 Here'a a pertinent quote in that Washington Post piece:

"'I do not trust the private sector to make good decisions for people,' said Shuchi Galati, founder of the nonprofit Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering. 'The whole move-fast-and-break-things ethos - I've see it and it hasn't gone particularly well for society."

Most governments don't have specific laws banning geoengineering. But remember those kinda wacky laws in some states, and a Marjorie Taylor Greene-sponsored piece of legislation that banned weather modification due to unfounded fears of chemtrails?  Those laws might just apply to these geoengineering firms. 

The Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency has already gone after Make Sunsets for the minuscule amount of sulfur dioxide the company has put into the air. Which is a bit rich, since the Trump people have rolled back regulations that were helping reduce fossil fuel emissions.  The most obvious way to fight climate change is getting rid of fossil fuel, but that would make the Trump people unhappy. So we can't have that. 

But even if every nation in the world enacted laws and regulations banning freelance methods of trying to blunt climate change, like pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, that might not stop real trouble.  A few rogue  billionaires will probably try to get around nations' "stupid laws"  - possibly at humanity's expense. 

HOW IT GOES SOUTH

Luke Iseman, the founder of Make Sunsets, said he got the idea for his business from the science fiction novel "Termination Shock." The premise of the novel is that billionaires take it upon themselves to fight climate change. 

In the book, a Texas billionaire launches a geoengineering project that does save low lying areas from sea level rise, but also introduces a brutal, deadly drought elsewhere. Obviously, a lot more goes on that in the story, but the book's title refers to the concept that once a geoengineering project starts, abruptly stopping it later results in skyrocketing warming, which is called termination shock. 

Termination shock would have the world abruptly warm to the high levels you would have had if you didn't reduce fossil fuel usage, and never tried to block the sun with sulfur dioxide, or whatever you're trying to use to do that . 

Remember how within a couple years after Pinatubo blew up in 1991, climate change picked up where it left off? That was a couple years. The world without Pinatubo's sulfer dioxide wasn't that much warmer in 1993 than it was in 1990.  In the grand scheme of things, mankind didn't have to make many quick adjustments due to a new climate.

Now imagine if we cut off climate change today by spraying the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide and kept doing it until, say, 2060.  Suddenly, within a year, maybe 18 months after 2060, the world abruptly warms from something like we have now, which is bad enough, to something dangerously hotter. 

It's hard enough adapting to climate change at the pace it's going now. Imagine trying to deal with the sudden extreme heat, even more extreme storms and gawd knows what else if global temperature spikes incredibly sharply in a year or two. 

Then imagine the cascading food shortages, disasters and resulting civil unrest, mass migration and war this snap-of-the-fingers change might bring.  There's a recipe for a dystopian novel at best, an incredibly grim future at worst

The trouble with some (most?) billionaires is that they think they're the Enlightened Ones, who are smarter than everybody else. So they'll just do what they want because their narcissism makes them think they can save the world. Or at least add to their billions in cash they have piled up. 

 The minions the billionaires collect like dust bunnies under the sofa will do it.  (That's why Congress kowtows to the 1% so much nowadays. They want their take of the profits.

Here's the Washington Post quote from Iseman himself:

"If every country in the world bans this, and a billionaire comes to me and says, 'Here's a boat with a flag of convenience that's not going to enforce the ban...I want to take credit if people like it and have plausible deniability if they don't. Go. You know, I can think of no better way to spend the next several years."

The plausible deniability part of the quote really had my eyes rolling to the back of my head.  

What happens when the billionaire runs out of money, or more likely loses interest in the geoengineering project as fast as a dude with ADHD loses interest in any boring spreadsheet you put in front of him? . 

Billionaires almost never suffer the consequences of what they start. So when the climate really goes haywire when the said billionaire abandons his little sulfur dioxide scheme,   he'll be whisked to his safe private island, safe from the global chaos he's created. 

While the rest of us rubes pay the consequences.  

Could A Small But Rapidly Disintegrating Antarctic Glacier Climate Change Danger Signal?

Hektoria glacier in Antarctica was largely reduced
to debris ice after it abruptly retreated at a record pace.
Photo by Naomi Ochwat

When you think of glaciers, and how they melt, you probably picture a slow, drip, drip, and maybe a little stream or river running out of the edge of it. 

You'd think it would take years, even decades for most of a glacier to wilt or disappear under pressure from climate change. 

But one glacier in Antarctica, the Hektoria Glacier, is breaking speed records for eroding, says a team of researchers led by Naomi Ochwat, a University of Colorado glaciologist.

Per the Washington Post;

"More than five miles of glacial ice in Antarctica vanished in only two months, retreating 10 times as fast as the previous record, with possible implications for the stability of other glaciers and the pace of sea-level rise on a warming planet."

 Hektoria Glacier is on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, and is pretty small compared to most glaciers in Antarctica. It'sabout the size of Philadelphia.  The peninsula is that finger of land that comes off Antarctica and points toward South America, like a frigid finger seeking out warmth away from the Antarctic ice cap. 

But the fact that it retreated so fast makes scientists wonder about other, much bigger glaciers. Can they, too, disintegrate as fast as Hektoria? Was Hektoria a canary in a coal mine, or since this is Antarctica, a penguin in a coal mine?

That would be a problem, as glaciers that are on land add to global sea level rise as they melt. A rapid melt might accelerate those rising sea levels beyond what many scientists already expect.

 It's already bad enough, as storms are increasingly bringing sometimes serious storm surges to coastlines. We also already have "sunny day floods" when tides are particularly high when the pull of the moon is just right. 

If all of Antarctica's ice melted, sea levels would rise by about 190 feet. Of course, much of Antarctica's ice is here to stay, but even if a small percentage its glaciers go bye-bye, sea coasts worldwide would be in big, big trouble. 

Here's how the Hektoria Glacier disintegrated, as WaPo tells us

"Heckoria is a tidewater glacier, meaning it flows across land before ending in the sea. After rising temperatures reduced the amount of sea ice in the bay abutting the glacier, waves broke down ice fastened to the coastline that had protected Hektoria. 

And, without that buffer, the floating end of the glacier began cracking and shedding icebergs into the ocean."

Once the glacier lost its floating portion, the rest of it thinned, and a gently sloping plain underneath the glacier let ocean water to seep in. The ice bobbed up with the water getting beneath it, so it broke up quickly. 

As usual with these things, there's disagreement over whether this is a one-off or if many other glaciers are on the brink of collapsing. 

There's something called the grounding zone. It's the spot beneath the glacier's ice where the ground ends and it starts to float on ocean water. 

The scientists looking into this don't exactly know where the Hektoria Glacier grounding zone is. If the grounding zone is further inland than the researchers figure, the glacier ice was already on water, making it more prone to breaking up. 

Ochwat said seismic sensors detected a bunch of little earthquakes when Hektoria was in retreat and falling apart. That probably means the ice was resting on bedrock. "Because that ice is touching the Earth, we get earthquakes," she said. 

The Washington Post said Ochwat is going to look at other Antarctic glaciers to see if they're also on slick, shallow beds that are vulnerable to fast retreats. 

The reason that people are worried about other glaciers is, of course, climate change. 

As CNN tells us:

"Hektoria's retreat was heavily influenced by climate change (Ockwat) said. The loss of sea ice in the ocean next to Hektoria, believed to have been driven by ocean warmth, allowed wave swells to reach the fast ice and break it up, leaving the glacier exposed to ocean forces."

As sea ice continues to decline due to climate change, more glaciers might be poised to fall apart like Hektoria did. 

Hektoria is "a smaller cousin to some truly gigantic - I mean the size of the island of Britain - glaciers in Antarctica that could conceivably go through the same process, as this whole evolution of the ice sheets on Earth evolves with global warming," Bethan Davies, a glacial geologist at Newcastle University told CNN. 

 There's another glacier in Antarctica, the Thwaites Glacier, which some overwroughtly call the "Doomsday Glacier" contributes 4% of overall sea level rise. Another one the Pine Island Glacier is Antarctica's fastest melting glacier. 

The bottom line: Antarctica makes climatologists nervous, and this new knowledge isn't exactly Zoloft  for scientist's climate change anxiety. 

We need to make sure scientists keep studying the hell out of Antarctica and its ice and its melt rate. What goes on in Antarctica doesn't stay in Antarctica.   

Two More Houses Falls Into Sea In North Carolina. Video Shows Sad Home Destruction, Somber Onlookers

"Skybox," a house on the shore in Rondanthe,
North Carolina that has been teetering
for days, finally collapsed into the waves
Friday evening. Photo via Facebook
Wes Snyder Photography.

On Thursday, I told you seven houses fell into the Atlantic Ocean at Buxton, North Carolina, thanks to big swells created by now-former hurricanes Humberto and Imelda.  

Later on Thursday, an eighth house fell in. Like many of the other homes, this one was widely caught on video. 

One video, by Brett Barley I found to be quite striking.  It really brings home the sense of loss and sadness in the Outer Banks as climate change teams up with a naturally unstable barrier island to create a slow motion disaster. 

I'll link to it on the bottom of this post.

A ninth house known as "Skybox", collapsed in nearby Rodanthe, North Carolina last evening, bringing to 21 the number of houses lost to the rising sea over the past five years. 

Skybox had been teetering for days, and local residents were impressed by it resilience, despite being battered by hurricane swells for days. 

Several other houses look ready to go in the inevitable next hurricane or nor'easter 

The collapses over the past five years are often taking place under clear, balmy skies. Gorgeous weather, except for the falling houses. It's often been distant storms hurling powerful swells into the Outer Banks that have caused the destruction. 

In Barley's video, you can see a large crowd had gathered just behind a big debris field left by the other homes that fell to the waves.  It was a somber crowd, without the kinds of hoots and hollers you get the people watch other dramatic moments. 

Barley explains why in the note below the YouTube video:

"The majority of these homes were built buy locales, they are maintained by locals, the visitors who come and stay in them support the local economy. They are more than 'just someone's rental property.' They are a part of this community regardless of who owns it. 

They have helped put food on the table for may families here over and and over again. They have made memories for those who came and stay.... weddings, birthdays, honeymoons, family vacations, etc. They are part of the memories of those who live here and work/play amongst the beach and neighborhoods they make up."

Much like the case of Skybox, people root for other clearly doomed houses. Part of us always want to deny the inevitable. 

When the house in Barley's video first collapses, it bumps in a large green house next door, which is also being battered by the swells from the two distant hurricanes. You can see the green house is in rough shape, and could go at any time. The porches are askew, and you can detect a slight lean toward the ocean. One of the main pilings is badly cracked. 

Comparison photo showing homes in
Buxton, North Carolina a decade ago
and this week. The erosion has been
incredible. Photo via Facebook, 
Edward Sneed. 

Meanwhile the house that collapsed in the video slowly breaks apart. The first floor was partially crushed in the immediate crash, and the waves take apart the rest of the lower walls. The second floor briefly stays intact, which is what we've seen in previous collapse videos from the Outer Banks. 

The video lingers on how pieces of somebody's life come apart with each wave.  A striped couch and matching chairs suddenly bob in the waves. Then a refrigerator floats out of the house 

As the house is slowly disintegrates, it starts out to the left of the green house, and the waves take it front of that green house, and finally leave the wreckage to the right of the green house. The collapsed house never really hits the green house after the initial bump.

But sure enough, we'll one day, probably soon, see video of the green house collapsing, or the wreckage of it floating in the surf. 

The collapsed houses are an enormous mess, of course. The debris - wood, broken glass, nails, potentially toxic insulation and other materials, spread along for miles of beach.

Crews were moving in fast to remove the wreckage, but the waves are faster. All the Outer Banks collapse videos this week show debris spreading far and wide. 

I've seen a lot of talk about people being dumb to build houses right on the water. But the houses that just collapsed in North Carolina actually used to be at least a block or two inland from the beach. 

One person who commented on Barley's video said they rented the house that collapsed a year ago. They said at the time, the house seemed quite stable, despite a strong storm they experiences while staying there. 

Rising sea levels inevitably change the shape of the seacoast, and this is what you get. 

In North Carolina, a 2024 report stated that 750 of nearly 8,800 oceanfront structures are at risk from erosion. Dealing with this is expensive. Reinforcing the shore with dredged sand or rock is expensive. So is using state or federal funds to buy out the threatened homes and demolish them before the waves do. 

We're going to see more and more of this, not just in North Carolina, but up and down the East Coast as those sea levels rise and storms get more intense with climate change. Meanwhile, people are still flocking to the seacoast. 

This is going to be part of a very costly depressing future. 

VIDEO

Video of a house collapsing into the water Thursday in Buxton, North Carolina and then gradually disintegrating . Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

Big Heat Waves Hitting Large Parts Of World, Are We Next?

When you see a weather pattern like this in the
summer with a big ridge or northward bulge in
the jet stream over the Northeast, expect a heat
wave. This is one forecast for next Tuesday, 
though computer models are varying on the
strength and duration of the hot spell. 

With climate change taking hold more and more, dangerous, record breaking heat waves have been hitting different parts of the world each summer in the past few years.  

It's only June, but the deadly extreme heat fest for 2025 has already started here on Earth.

 What strikes me the most is that there are currently so many record heat waves going on in different parts of the globe simultaneously. 

There's always a heat wave somewhere in the summer, but the fact that places as diverse as Japan, France, and Kuwait are breaking all time record highs for the month of June all at the same time is pretty unsettling.

We in Vermont could get at least a taste of the hot weather next week. And I think all time record heat will hit the Green Mountain State within the next few years.  More on that in a bit. 

WORLDWIDE HEAT

First, we'll look at some of the incredible heat withering different parts of the world. Much of this information comes from Maximiliano Hererra, a climatologist who tracks worldwide heat waves.

Our first visit is to Kuwait, since the strongest heat was there. Kuwait is an extraordinary hot nation anyway, but this is ridiculous. At last report, the following Kuwaiti figures haven't been confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization.

But if these temperatures are real, they're insane. 

If the 130 degree temperature in Kuwait is confirmed, it would tie the reliable record for the world's hottest temperature on record, which was 130 degrees in Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California on July 9, 2021.

The widely reported hottest temperature isn 134 degrees in Death Valley on July 10, 1913, but there are questions about the reliability of that long-ago reading. 

EUROPE HEAT

A heat wave is building in Europe, too, with record high temperatures already reported in France and Germany. A few cities have already set record highs for the entire month of June. One town in France has hit 100 degrees over the pst couple of days. It's been as hot as 96 degrees in Germany.

Nights in parts of western Europe have been sultry, giving no real relief from the heat. Overnight lows in much of Germany over the weekend were in the low 70s. 

Mertola, Portugal on Sunday reached 105 degrees, hottest for so early in the season. Parts of Spain broiled over the weekend in temperatures as high as 107 degrees.

ASIA

At least 23 weather stations in China have broken their all time record high temperatures for the month of June. In Japan, at least a dozen cities have set record highs for the entire month of June, with readings reaching the upper 90s.  Parts of Indonesia, India and Pakistan are also reporting unprecedented June heat. 

UNITED STATES

The eastern United States is being plagued by persistent storminess that has led to some terrible flash flooding in the central Appalachians. Those floods are expected to continue for the next couple of days, but a new element is about to be added.

Forecasts call for a strong, hot ridge of high pressure to develop over the East early next week. At least a some record high temperatures are expected from the Plains to the East Coast. It's possible a few cities could see their all-time record for the month of June threatened. 

Some computer models depict insanely hot weather in the Northeast early next, though I think a few of these are overdone.  Some runs of the European model bring New York City to an all time high of 107 degrees. The Euro depicts highs up to 101 degrees in southeast Vermont and 97 degrees as far north as Burlington.

I doubt it will get that hot. I think the European model is exaggerating. But the way things are going around the world, who knows?   

VERMONT FORECAST

A taste of very warm, oppressive weather will arrive tomorrow and Thursday, with high humidity and temperatures well up into the 80s.  This won't be anywhere near any record highs, but it will be our most solid introduction to heat and humidity yet this year.

Showers and thunderstorms both tomorrow and Thursday will help hold temperatures well under 90 degrees, but will help keep the humidity incredibly uncomfortable.

We get a brief break Friday and Saturday with high temperatures both days in the 70s. But then the heat should begin to build back up starting Sunday, when it should get into the 80s with increasing humidity. 

Most forecasts have much of Vermont in the low 90s next Monday and Tuesday. There's a slight chance those outlier models of extreme, record breaking heat early next week are correct, but for now, I'm really doubting that. 

The heat next week should be mercifully brief, as temperatures by midweek should drop some.  But only to levels that are normal, or a little warmer than normal for this time of year. 

The long range weather pattern forecast also suggests that strong heat will spend most of the rest of June and probably beyond lurking not all that far to our south and west.  If the wind swings in the right direction, we have the potential for more big oppressive hot spells through the summer. 

NOAA forecasts for this summer in New England have consistently pointed toward a hotter than normal summer. 

FUTURE HEAT

While June and all-time heat records have been falling worldwide in recent years, the all-time hot records for Vermont remain distinctly old fashioned.

The hottest on record for anywhere in Vermont still stands at the 105 degrees recorded down in Vernon way back on July 4, 1911. The hottest it's ever gotten in Burlington is 101 degrees on August 11, 1944.

Now that climate change is increasingly in our lives, I think it's just a matter of time before those old records are broken. And I suspect it could come within just a matter of a few to several years.

We've had some incredible, record smashing hot spells in Vermont in recent years, but they have tended to not come in the summer.  It's just a roll of the dice when they hit. 

In Burlington, records go back to the 1880s. But the records for hottest temperature on record for the entire months of February, May, September, November and December have all happened since 2002 - so pretty recently in the grand scheme of things. Just last Halloween we shattered the record for hottest for so late in the season - 78 degrees on October 31.

That's why I think we are close to breaking are all-time record highs. An intense mid-summer unprecedented heat wave feels inevitable in this age of climate change. 

Red States Learning How Callous Trump Can Be In Disasters

Wreckage left behind by one of the tornadoes that 
hit Arkansas in March. The Trump administration 
has turned down disaster assistance that 
would have helped with the tornado destruction. 

 The state of Arkansas has had a rough spring, beset by tornadoes, intense floods and severe weather. 

As is customary in these situations, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee has asked the federal government for help. For good reason. 

As Huffington Post reports:

"Last month, 14 tornadoes struck Arkansas over the course of two days, killing three people and leaving 32 more injured. The deadly outbreak damaged or destroyed 500 homes, cars and businesses, leaving behind more than $8.8 million in storm damage."

Customarily, U.S presidents respond to request like Huckabee's to issue a disaster declaration and that starts the process in which the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin organizing funds to help the state with its emergency.

In this case it didn't happen. As HuffPost reports:

"But President Donald Trump said no. In a letter from April 11, the federal government said it had 'determined that the damage from this event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies."

To be fair, as bad as the March storm was in Arkansas, it's possible it might not have risen to the level of  a declared disaster in any administration. It's honestly kind of borderline. For instance, half of the destroyed homes were insured, so that might have been a mitigating factor. 

Still, Trump has talked about punishing blue states where voters aren't all that enthusiastic about him. Arkansas is a deep red state, and Gov. Huckabee is Trump's former press secretary, so maybe some Arkansas thought they would get the federal aid. 

The Arkansas Congressional delegation is asking Trump to reconsider the denial of aid, but we'll see where that goes.

The Arkansas tornado aid denial might be the beginning of a harsh new policy from FEMA.

Trump has long said he thinks states should pretty much handle their own disasters, though in many cases they don't have the resources to do that. That shift in tone is starting to make its way into official policy. 

As CNN reports:

"A memo from acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton, a Trump appointee, obtained by CNN, outlines a long list of recommendations for Trump to follow that could drastically reduce the number of emergency declarations the president approves and the amount of federal assistance doled out to cities and states hit by natural disasters."

CNN says the proposal dramatically raised the threshold for states to quality for public assistance, basically quadrupling the amount of damage a community must suffer to receive federal aid. 

The proposal also reduces the share of recovery costs the federal government will pay, limit the types of facilities eligible for assistance and denying all major disaster declarations for snowstorms. 

To us Vermonters, a snowstorm doesn't sound all that expensive, and they often do more good than harm, given our winter sports industry. 

But in other states, especially those in the South and with a lot of urban areas, large snowstorms can be extremely expensive and disruptive.  

Like so much in the Trump administration, it's next to impossible to figure out if they will follow through with these recommendations, abandon them or make them even worse. It'll change every day, I'm sure. 

Moving quickly on this will be particularly harmful to states, Michael Coen, a former FEMA chief of staff under the Obama and Biden administrations told CNN. "If they were given notice and they could work with their state legislatures, they could prepare and budget to be able to handle the risks they know they have. But doing this without giving states any advance notice would leave them in dire straights."

Even with advance notice, I'm not sure how states would cope.  Here in Vermont, we're already dealing with cutbacks in federal funding that are messing up the state budget.  Property taxes are sky high and getting worse, so increased state budgets would make that crisis worse. We have an aging population in Vermont, which also reduces tax revenue as the relative number of wage earners shrinks. 

If we get hit by another massive flood like we did in 2023 and 2024, and we're screwed.  

It's not just Vermont, of course. Every state that faces a disaster will have so much  more trouble recovering because of Trump.  

Disasters are bad enough. It'll be even worse if the federal government compounds those calamities. 

After California Fires Ease, More Homes Likely Will Be Destroyed In Mudslides

Devastation after a debris flow killed 23 people in 
Mendicito, California in January, 2018. A large wildfire
a month earlier set the stage for this disaster.
The same or worse could happen again in the '
aftermath of this month's wildfires if the
weather turns very wet in February and March. 

 In what might at first glance seem like a strange development, a Pacific Palisades house miraculously spared by this month's wildfires was destroyed by a mudslide on Wednesday.  

No, unfortunately,  it did not rain in southern California yesterday.

 Instead, the home above where the mudslide started was destroyed in the fire.  Firefighting efforts and water leaks caused by the blaze soaked the steep hill, causing the mudslide.

This brings about a bigger worry:  If the rains finally returns, southern California could face devastating mudslides. 

This is always a risk on and below hillsides in the few years in the aftermath of a wildfire.  Vegetation that hold soil and rocks in place has been destroyed.  

Also, the heat of the fire makes soils "hydrophobic."  Yes, kind of afraid of water. 

The wildfires create a layer on top of the soil that water can't penetrate. Burning vegetation forms a sort of wax that oozes into the soil, then hardens when it cools. That creates that "hydrophobic" layer that rainwater can't get through. 

Then, when it finally rains on steep slopes, the rain starts running downhill, gathering fire debris, rocks, stones and whatever else it can grab.  These turn into devastating debris flows that wipe out everything in their path.  

The problem can last months or even years after a fire, but the sooner it rains heavily after the wildfire, the more critical the risk. 

Which leads us to the California wildfires. 

It's supposed to be the rainy season right now in and around Los Angeles. That it hasn't really rained yet this winter is why this wildfire devastation was so surprising. Had it rained like it normally would have, there still would have been an awful windstorm with lots of trees and power lines toppled. But there would have been either no fires, or blazes that wouldn't spread much and be easy to suppress.

The rainy season in southern California goes into March.  It could suddenly turn very wet.  Especially in this age of climate change, there's a greater propensity for "weather whiplash," in which conditions go abruptly from hot to cold and back again, or very wet to super dry to soggy again. 

I'll have more on this intensified "weather whiplash" in an upcoming post.

There's no real sign of rain in southern California anytime soon. Los Angeles might go the entire month of January without seeing any rain at all. On average, L.A. usually gets a little under three inches of rain in January.

There are subtle signs the weather pattern could change toward something wetter in February, though nobody knows for sure. 

POST-FIRE DEBRIS FLOWS

A worse case scenario is if the things change so abruptly that atmospheric rivers start plowing into the southern California from the Pacific. Atmospheric rivers are narrow bands of deep moisture that can create torrential rains and flooding.  

Atmospheric rivers hit the Los Angeles area last February, dousing the city with ten inches of rain that month - with seven inches coming in just two days.  To nobody's surprise, that caused some horrible flooding and mudslides. and causing some serious flooding. 

If the same thing were to  happen this February, it would be catastrophic. Freshly burned hillsides would slip away or send intense debris flows flying down hillsides. Also, the wreckage of destroyed homes would not have been removed yet, so that would add to the scary debris flows.

These things hit fast, and there's little time to get out of their way.  Usually, there's less time to evacuate ahead of a debris flow  than people had when they fled this month's wildfires.

There's a history of devastating debris flows after wildfires, both in the L.A. area and elsewhere. 

On December 4, 2017, the Thomas Fire broke out and consumed 282,000 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and consumed 1,000 structures. At the time, it was the largest wildfire in California history. 

Later that winter, the usual winter rains arrived in southern California. On January 9, 2018,  torrential rain fell on the Thomas Fire burn scar and sent a huge, devastating debris flow through Montecito, California, killing 23 people, injuring 150 and leaving hundred of homes and businesses destroyed or damaged.   

Last June, wildfires raced through the hills above Ruidoso, New Mexico, a community of about 8,000 people. Then the normal monsoon thunderstorms hit later in the summer. At least eight times, debris flows from the fire area crashed through the city during and after those summer downpours. 

As of today, the fires still rage in southern California. More strong, dry winds are possible next week, which could make the situation worse. 

Everybody wants it to rain in southern California. But we had better hope and pray the wet weather comes in the form of weeks with long periods of drizzle, light rain and fog. Such gentle wet weather would minimize debris flows.

The worst case scenario would be thunderstorms and downpours, which would a southern California catastrophe so much worse.   

A Year After Cataclysmic Vermont Flood, We Get Another One As Climate Gangs Up On Us.

Now that the weather has finally settled down, I've had a chance to think about the two big July flood disasters Vermont experienced on the same date two years in a row.  

Somebody's little piece of Vermont heaven was trashed by
the raging Huntington River on July 11. Similar scenes -
many much worse than this, were once again
common across Vermont this month. 

 We spent the day this July 11 marking the first anniversary of one of the worst flood on record in Vermont by....... picking up the pieces after another deadly Vermont flood.  

It does seem like it's harder and harder to catch one's breath between new weather extremes.  Flooding after July 10, 2023 continued sporadically through the rest of that month and on into August. 

Last year's summer disaster was followed by more rough, scary, disheartening weather. We had another destructive flood in December, twin windstorms that spread further damage in January, and severe thunderstorms and flash flooding in central Vermont just on June 23 -less than month ago.

And never mind the other extremes that didn't cause so much harm but had us weirded out: The hottest October day on record, the warmest winter on record, and damaging wet snowstorms in December and April. It goes on and on.  

This year, the subsequent series of storms following July 10 haven't been as damaging as last year's.

So far, anyway. 

A RECKONING

A year after the July, 2023, and just before the torrents hit again earlier this month, Vermont looked largely tidied up. 

A snippet of a Carly Simon lyric pops into my head here, "Close the wound, hide the scar."  The line from the song is about emotionally wounded people putting on a brave face.  

Which is where I think Vermont was on July 9.  And maybe will be again this time next year.  

Behind closed doors, people were still  still living in homes whose insides are still had not been repaired.  Business owners and home owners teeter on the edge of financial ruin from the flood's cost.  Farmers, always on the edge and at the mercy of the weather more than pretty much all of us, wonder if they will make it.   

A sign outside a church in flood-ravaged Johnson,
Vermont in July, 2023

People like this are out of the headlines, except of course when we're marking the anniversary of the disaster. 

The Associated Press's profile of one woman's current life a year after the flood is pretty harrowing. I'm stressed out just reading it. 

"Lisa Edson Neveu and her two teenage sons still live in their flood-wracked home, despite unrepaired damage that festers like an open wound: Torn-out walls and floors, a missing ceiling in one room and a downstairs bathroom that is no more. The family's kitchen was destroyed, so they cook meals on an outdoor grill, an electric frying pan and an air fryer."

The immediate aftermath wasn't the real problem. Neighbors helped neighbors, the National Guard really stepped up to the plate. But then that was it. 

They were on their own to fight insurance companies, the adjusters, FEMA, state and local regulations, you name it.  A Vermont flood typically comes and goes in a day. The aftermath lasts forever. 

At least Neveu didn't have to start from square one with murky water in her house again. Montpelier avoided another calamity this time. 

 Not so in Barre. Or Waterbury. Or other towns victimized again the night of July 10-11.  I heard one clip on the radio of somebody in Barre saying they hadn't finished cleaning up the debris from the July 2023 flood when this one hit. 

The sudden transition from Vermonter living in a paradise to a climate victim has to be one of the most disorienting things out there. 

VTDigger told us about Sequin Skye, a hospice nurse who lives - or at least lived - in an apartment building on Great Brook in Plainfield. 

The flooding covered her floor in silt. She didn't know which belongings she'd be able to save. A porch she loved sitting out on was in ruins. It was a piece of paradise before Wednesday night.

"I swear to you, it was like a babbling brook. And I sat and drank coffee yesterday on my little porch, listening to the brook and being so happy."  Now, everything was covered with dirt and mud, and it now "looks like some kind of desert."

The joy Skye experienced before the flood is shared by most Vermonters. For me, there's nothing better than sitting in this deep tub we put out on our lower deck. I fill it with cool water. On muggy evenings, I just sit there, watching the flowers bloom, absorb the deep, deep green of a Vermont summer, and wonder what all the birds are gossiping about. 

It's a moment of calm and respite for my chaotic brain.  But now, other thoughts intrude on the peace.

 I wonder, when will the other shoe drop? When will climate change directly intrude into this placid life?  

Of course, it already has intruded. You can't escape thinking about the plight of your neighbors who have been hit hard, nor should you. Storm warnings seem to carry more weight now. Will the next storm be the literal homewrecker? It seems you never know nowadays. 

BARRE

Speaking of homewreckers, what about the fate of communities that have been hit hard over and over again. Places like Barre.

Can a town like that survive after two big flood disasters in a year?  Plus having endured flooding last December?  I'm also not sure everyone in Barre recovered from two big floods in 2011.

Visitors flock to the picture perfect Instagram ready villages in Vermont, but the Green Mountain State is also home to a lot of working class towns. Ones with even less money to throw around than the pretty but still cash-strapped tourist destination towns.  

Like Barre.

I can't be the only thinking along these lines. Heck, even the Washington Post quoted me when I wrote last week, "I honestly don't know how Barre will recover from two devastating floods in one  year."

The city is losing housing and population from the flooding, yet other people are trapped in flood-prone houses, because they are not eligible for buyouts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has a program that provided money to towns so they can buy up properties in flood prone areas. In many cases, those purchased homes are torn down and the area they once occupied becomes green space such as parks.   

Rain pours down in Montpelier, Vermont and flooding
shown just beginning on July 10, 2023. About 90
minutes after this photo was taken, virtually all
of downtown Montpelier was under water. With
all of our disasters in mind, we now get
nervous with every torrential downpour.

Barre received 62 applications for buyouts, but could only approve 20, because that's all the money that was available 

It almost seems as if Barre won't entire die from all these floods because some people have nowhere else to go. 

It's not as if Barre is full of millionaires.  VTDigger profiled one family whose Barre home was damaged three times by flooding in the past year. Each time, their basement filled up with water and pollutants. They applied for a buyout, but were denied. For now, anyway, Barre is only accepting buyouts for houses nearest the flood prone Stevens Brook. 

Everybody in Barre, whether they suffered flood damage or not, is in a bind because of these repeated climate related disasters.

Reports VTDigger: 

"Barre 'can't afford to buy houses for people not along the river,' according to (City Manager Nick Storellicastro, because property bought out with FEMA funds must become permanent green spaces. The city simply can't lose more housing space, according to Storellicastro, nor can the city's budget - already 'in dire straits' from last summer's flood - absorb any further loss of property tax revenue."

So where does that leave Kate O'Day, her husband Nick Roos and their baby daughter, the family profiled in VTDigger?

On top of not qualifying for a buyout, around last Christmas they also received notices from the city that they must elevate their house somehow, and also bring utilities up from the basement to meet fresh city codes. 

VTDigger again:

"And the couple wonders: Who's going to want to rent or buy a house in a floodway, with an unusable basement that you still pay taxes on, and all the utilities taking up square footage in the living area upstairs?"

Roos and O'Day said they would probably sell the house, accept their financial losses and start over somewhere else. 

For many others, though, there is no somewhere else. Either because people can't afford to move, or they have such deep ties to their town that they simply can't let go. 

Which now leaves our happy rural town life tinged with sadness and worry. There's an excellent YouTube flood fundraising video from Gold Shaw Farm in hard-hit Peacham where the narrator describes how the flood physically and emotionally affected the close-knit town. 

What made Peacham especially tragic is that the flood claimed the life of Peacham resident Dylan Kempton, 33, a married father of young children and a man that everybody in town knew and loved. 

All these climate change disasters in Vermont make me think of another song, "Our Town," by the wonderful Iris Dement. It's about a woman who lived her entire life in one small town, and now the town has died, and she has to move away. Somewhere.

The vast majority of us in Vermont are not at that point yet.  But it makes me wonder if we will see a few of our towns die away.  

It would be such a shame to lose places like Peacham, Plainfield, Barre.   People in those communities are banding together, and Vermonters are pretty awesome at finding creative solutions to some of our deepest problems. 

But some of us might well have to abandon our dreams of living out our days in our small towns, driven out by climate change. I guess Vermont is one microcosm of what's going on everywhere else in the world. 

Those lyrics from Dement's "Our Town" haunt me, given what we've been through with climate disasters in recent years:

"And you know the sun's settin' fast

And just like they say nothing good ever lasts.

Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,

 But hold on to your lover 

'Cause your heart's bound to die.

Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.

Can't you see the sun's settin' fast down on our town, on our town

Goodnight."

 

 

Not Just Vermont: Misery Loves Company In Worldwide Floods

On July 12, the day after the Lamoille River receded enough,
Vermont highway crews begin repairs near the Wrong
Way Bridge along Route 15 in Cambridge. 

 Vermonters know from painful recent experience that we don't want anybody else to go through what we just did this month.  

Alas, a lot of people are going through this. Not only is the world baking in record heat this summer, It's also drowning in floods. 

It's everywhere. In neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts, floodwaters destroyed roads and houses in a daylong deluge on Sunday. 

In Pennsylvania, at least five people, including children, died in a remarkably sudden flash flood that caught them unaware in a semi-rural part of Bucks County. The flooding spread to New Brunswick, New Jersey Tuesday, nearly drowning  a family trying to escape the onrushing water. 

Just Wednesday morning, news broke of a flash flood emergency and "particularly dangerous situation in western Kentucky, especially around the city of Mayfield.  Nearly a foot of rain fell on the area in just a few hours, necessitating numerous water rescues. 

If Mayfield rings a bell, it's because it was the town decimated by a huge tornado in December, 2021.  Like that hurting town needs another big disaster. But there you go. 

It goes far beyond the United States. 

At least 40 people died in South Korea this month as flash floods lashed much of that nation.  Many of the victims were trapped in a tunnel when it almost instantly filled up with water. 

Monsoon floods strike India every summer, but this year's version is pretty extreme, even by their standards.

Floodwaters approached the famed Taj Mahal, though water is not expected to enter the World Heritage Site. However, it's rare for the flooding river to rise to levels so close to the compound. 

Severe floods last week also struck Japan, China and Turkey.

Floods occur every year somewhere, and this has gone on for millennia. Some of these floods are horrific.    But just like the greater propensity we've seen for heat waves in recent summers, floods have become a bigger threat, too. It's another climate change thing. 

As Phys.org points out:

"For every 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) that the atmosphere warms, it holds approximately 7 % more moisture. According to NASA, the average global temperature has increased by at least 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.

'Sixty-eight degree Fahrenheit can hold twice as mulch water as 50 degrees Fahrenheit,' said Rodney Wynn, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in  Tampa Bay. 'Warm air expands and cool air contracts. You can think of it as a balloon - when it's heated the volume is going to get large, so therefore it can hold more moisture.'

 This summer, El Nino has taken hold. El Nino generally heats the world up. It's working in concert with climate change to give us a glimpse of what the world's future will be like in the not distant future.

Don't think for a minute Vermont is free from any more giant floods since we've just been through two in 12 years. 

A Dartmouth study indicates extreme precipitation events in the Northeast are projected to increase by 52 percent by the end of the century. They definite these extreme events as 1.5 inches of rainfall or melted snow within a day. 

 The Dartmouth researchers said rainfall extremes have already increased markedly since about 1996.   The projected increase  in extreme rainfall would be blunted somewhat if real steps to sharply reduce carbon emissions take hold, but I'm not counting on that. 

One thing we can count on, sooner or later. Vermont will suffer another episode like we have this month. I hope Vermont officials continue to take seriously their commitment to build back with even more resilience in mind. 

Should Vermont Prepare For An Influx Of Climate Refugees?

Aerial view of Interstate 89, Exit 12, Taft Corners, Williston,
Vermont as it looked in 1975. The area is now essentially a 
mini-city. Williston and the rest of Vermont might see
more rapid population growth soon due to 
"climate refugees" fleeing vulnerable parts of the U.S 

We're seeing one mega-disaster weather after another, almost all of which were worsened by climate change.  

Will this trigger a new great migration of people fleeing vulnerable areas?  

And if that happens, will Vermont be part of the receiving end of this big migration?

Experts are warning that residents of western and southern states, faced with extreme drought, wildfires, water shortages, big storms, hurricanes and sea level rise, will soon start to swarm toward "safer" places in the United States.

One projection by Matthew Hauer, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University suggests 13.1 million Americans will relocate because of sea level rise along by 2100, based on projections that seas along the U.S. coast will rise by nearly six feet by then.  

Where will all these people go?  Apparently, mostly north and east.  To the Midwest and the interior Northeast. Vermont is looking like one of the more desirable landing spots for these migrants. There's lots of reasons why. 

Vermont is one place where we don't need to worry about sea level rise. At least not directly.  The Green Mountain State is regarded a "safe" place from climate change.  Sure, we're affected by global warming in the form of worse flooding, periodic droughts, stronger, weirder storms, hotter summers and iffier winters. 

But we tend to avoid the worst of it all. The summer heat waves aren't all that bad, compared to other areas of the nation. We don't often experience hurricanes.  Big wildfires are exceedingly rare. Droughts tend not to be as punishing as in the South and West. 

Vermont is such a Goldilocks state for climate change avoidance that a detailed study by ProPublic and New York Times in 2021 listed the "safest "counties in the United States in terms of threats from climate change. Six of the top ten safest counties were in Vermont. 

I still don't know whether that's true, but it does make sound Vermont enticing, doesn't it? Certainly, most of the 13.1 million sea level/climate refugees won't come to Vermont. But some of them might.  A small percentage of those refugees would certainly swell our population far beyond the current 625,000 or so. 

It's easier than ever to pull up roots and move. Most people need a job, and we don't have millions of employment opportunities here in Vermont. However, the pandemic demonstrated that it's often surprisingly easy to work from home, or from anywhere as long as you have a decent internet connection.    Want to live in Vermont but your job is in California? No problem! You can do both! 

On one hand, this is good.  We have an aging population in the Green Mountain State, and we need relatively young, educated people here to boost our work force and our economy. We even have an incentive program that pays younger working families to move to Vermont to start new careers and lives. 

However, plenty of roadblocks get in the way of a potential booming population.  There's virtually no affordable housing around here. Or infrastructure, really. Plus, our population has been relatively stable for a century now. Vermont's population is less than double of that of 1900. Other states have grown exponentially.

We're accustomed to slow growth.  What if our population begins to grow rapidly?

We cherish our rural atmosphere. Our little farms, undeveloped forests, our lack of crowds.  We like our small and quirky state.  Will we adjust to many more arrivals if forced to? 

There's already resistance. Vermonters understandably cling to the small scale patterns of towns, populations, roads, you name it. We're not enamored by high rise buildings, super freeways, or endless sprawls of apartment blocks, "honky tonks, Dairy Queens and 7-11's," to quote an old Talking Heads song.  

Sprawl has long been a dirty word in Vermont. If we do receive an influx of climate change refugees, we will have to build more densely in existing town centers, and build upward. Meaning something akin to high rises. 

I can't imagine (at least not yet!) a Vermont with 30, 40, or 50 story towers.  Currently, the tallest building in Vermont is Decker Towers in Burlington, at a mere 11 floors, or 124 feet tall. Vermont has the distinction of having the shortest tallest building in the United States, if that makes any sense. 

By the looks of things, Vermont is going to have a hard time building anything remotely as tall as Decker Towers. Here's just one example, courtesy of VTDigger:

Busy Taft Corners in Williston is going through another rezoning effort.

Part of the change involves building heights. Currently, the tallest building you can construct there is 52 feet - about four stories.  Town officials wanted to raise the Taft Corners building height limit to 110 feet. That's about eight stories, so not gigantic. 

The town selectboard got so much blowback from that idea that they lowered the proposed height limit to 87 feet, or about six stories. That's still way too high for many people in Williston.  VTDigger quoted one resident:  "I just don't want to see a tall building in the middle of Williston, period. You know, it's a small town. It is a town. It's not a city."

Like it or not, the Taft Corners area of Williston has become a defacto small city.  This isn't the only building height fight we've had recently. Burlington saw huge opposition back in 2015 to a proposal to build two 14-story towers in the city's downtown.

It's either taller buildings or much more intense sprawl in Vermont if people flee to the relative safety of the Green Mountain State. One way or another, we'll have to choose. 

Vermont is already losing about 14,500 acres per year to residential development. (All of last summer, I heard the hammers and equipment for new houses going up in a formerly forested area less than a mile from my St. Albans house).

Building heights and sprawl are just two issues among many.  We'd have to think about things large and small. School size and budgets, taxes, affordable housing, infrastructure, broadband, land use, job creation,  cultural shifts. It goes on and on. 

Societal issues arise, too. Things that are really hard to talk about, but need to be confronted. Vermont is among the whitest states in the nation. We have a reputation for tolerance, but we have our share of racist, homophobes, Christian nationalists and other creepy people living here. 

A fair number of climate refugees that eventually arrive here will be Black, or of Hispanic, Asian or Arabic descent. How well will Vermont do as its racial diversity changes? I can only hope the resurgence of racism and xenophobia in the United States doesn't intensify further nationally and here in Vermont.   

We have slightly less but still real conflict points too.  Many Vermonters still dismissively refer to newcomers as "flatlanders" who supposedly don't fit in or bring their "problematic" ways of life to the Green Mountain State. 

It'll probably be best to welcome climate refugees if we get them, since it's starting to look almost inevitable. Other locations are largely supporting what is already starting to be an influx. 

In April, Tulane University associate professor of real estate Jesse Keenan provided CNBC a list of American cities that would be great "climate havens." In addition to Burlington, Vermont, Keenan listed cities like Buffalo and Rochester, New York, Asheville, North Carolina, Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Duluth, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Detroit, Michigan. 

Several of these are rust belt cities that fell on hard times during the later half of the 20th century. This might, for these communities, a bit of a resurgence and recovery. 

Buffalo, New York is already promoting itself as a climate refuge city. This city of screaming, blinding lake effect blizzards is actually regarded as among the safest from weather and climate disasters. 

Wildfires and hurricanes tend not to hit Buffalo. Heat waves are actually the leading cause of weather-related fatalities. Buffalo does get heat waves, but less so than many areas of the nation. Plus, Lake Erie tends to temper the worst of the heat waves. Bonus: Lake Erie has plenty of fresh water, so droughts are not that big a problem.

Also, there's room in Buffalo for an influx of people. As Fast Company notes, Buffalo's population was around a half million in the 1950s and is now about half that. 

Buffalo is also boosting affordable housing and bolstering its infrastructure for a climate refugee wave that has already started.    Roughly 3,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the Buffalo metro area to start new lives after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island. 

Fast Company does raise a risk that climate refugees can create in Buffalo, and anywhere else, including Vermont: Climate gentrification. Says the Fast Company article:

"'Think about the first people who are going to start migrating because of climate,' says Ryan McPherson, chief sustainability officer at the University of Buffalo. 'Those are not going to be poor people, right? Those are going to be people with resources. And so, we have to make sure that as we think about planning and making Buffalo ready for climate migration that we do that in a way that is very equitable and fair."

Wealth inequity is another important factor that we'll need to consider.  We already have an extreme dearth of affordable housing. Plus, people with wealth tend to get their way, at least more than people of more modest means. The more well-heeled could potentially crowd out people of more modest means.

Sure, we'll need to welcome climate refugees when the time comes, but we 'll need the backbone and morals to take Buffalo's pledge: Make it fair to everybody, not just the folks with lots of cash lying around.  We can't just let the wealthy drop in and snap up all the housing and land. There's got to be some fairness involved. 

Vermont is already starting to see the first few climate refugees. For instance, at least three families fled Paradise, California after the town was destroyed by a 2018 wildfire and ended up in the Green Mountain State. 

For instance the Boston Globe profiled the Holden family, who lost everything to the Paradise fire, and subsequently moved to "safer" Proctor, Vermont to start a new life.  They did a lot of research, including watching YouTube videos of the horrible 2011 tropical storm Irene flooding.  They were relieved that the Proctor/Rutland area, while damaged by the flood, was mostly intact after the disaster, unlike Paradise, California.  

And the house they purchased did not suffer any flood damage from Irene. 

The current small influx of people is manageable, and judging from the Globe article, the Holdens seem to be settling in just fine in Proctor. 

However climate change and its effects on human behavior often hit in sudden and surprising ways. Good, smart people in Vermont  are beginning to at least think about how to deal with this potential influx of people.

As WCAX-TV reported last year, we need to do a lot more to prepare for this possible influx: 

"UVM Professor of Community Development and Applied Economics Chris Koliba says from a social and economic standpoint, Vermont probably isn't ready to take in more people."

Koliba's remarks to WCAX in December, 2021 are not doubt just as true now. 

Note that we had a bit of an influx of people during the early months of the Covid pandemic, and that made the state's housing shortage worse, and strained schools and infrastructure to at least some extent.

The potential influx of climate refugees to Vermont does not at all have to be a bad thing. As Seven Days reported in January, these newcomers can inject the state's economy with new jobs and commerce, rescue flagging local schools and expand Vermont's tax base. 

As Seven Days notes, as long as we plan soberly, and welcome people of all income types, especially the squeezed middle class, and keep our rural character, we can reap the economic benefits. This could easily be a win for Vermont. Which sounds harsh, since climate change is such a loss.  " 

As for me, I'm absolutely for welcoming people to Vermont.  But we have to do it right and well. There won't be any do-overs.