Last weekend parts of Connecticut received 16 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Other parts received upwards of 8 inches. The onslaught was not predicted and was caused by a storm system that stalled over the state and extended into and beyond the Long Island Sound.
The storm (is that even an adequate word?) in Connecticut has been deemed a 1,000-year flood. Let that sink in. A 1,000-year flood. The 100-, 500- and 1,000-year flood designations are meant to be used – in part -- when engineering infrastructure such as roads, bridges, dams, culverts, etc.
But as Warren Conservation Commission chair Jito Coleman pointed out in an interview last week, those numbers are no longer valid. Vermont alone has been hit by three 100-year floods in 18 months. St. Johnsbury experienced those same floods but then had its own possibly 1,000-year flood at the end of July.
Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 was a 500-year flood. The flood of 1998 was a 100-year flood.
It is increasingly clear that Coleman is right. These numbers don’t provide any real way to understand an increasingly volatile climate. And it’s disturbing and increasingly scary that we don’t have any really good way of understanding and quantifying the impacts of a changing climate – other than to accept that extreme weather events are the hallmarks of a warming planet.
That’s small consolation for Connecticut and Saint Johnsbury and Plainfield and Lyndon, and Duxbury and Waterbury and Fayston and Moretown, and the parts of upstate New York (that were inundated by the remnants of Hurricane Ernesto on August 9 and 10). That’s no consolation for the folks in southern Ontario in Milton and Mississauga and Toronto who saw similar extreme rainfall last weekend.
We need better metrics; we need a better understanding and we need better forecasting tools. We’re going to need better infrastructure and a better way to co-exist with all our rivers and streams and our tiny brooks. We’re going to have to cede some of the lower ground.
The level of extreme weather we’re seeing is accelerating. The time for arguing whether climate change is real is over.
