So what is it with all this rain?
It's not normal, but what seems to be normal is to blame it on climate change.
Three times in the last month or so, we on the Delmarva Peninsula have been socked with significant rainstorms. Some reports I’ve seen say a foot of rain has fallen in some local places since the first of December.
While the optimists among us say, “at least it wasn’t snow, or you’d still be digging out,” the pessimist climate change zealot calls it more proof that we’re ruining the planet and the only way to stop it is to immediately quit burning fossil fuels and developing rural areas. “Move everyone into ‘15-minute’ cities,” they say.
Obviously these examples of an anecdotal nature and they depend on my sometimes-fuzzy memory, but this is the fifth winter we have lived in our modest Delaware home. As I recall, winters number one and number four were almost snow-free, while winter number two was one-and-done. It was winter number three where I had to call the neighbor to plow out our driveway. Since I moved down here almost twenty years ago, we’ve had maybe a half-dozen major snowstorms, ones which bolster the average around here of 10” or so a winter. (The one we had to get the driveway plowed was pretty close to that by itself, but we had a couple other good 2-4” snows that winter, too.)
I also recall one fall where a large field on my way to and from work was completely flooded, and the water didn’t recede for months, something on the scale from October to April. But I think that was the one-and-done year, so most of what kept that field wet was rain.
The other phenomenon I’ve noticed over the years is that winters around here generally tend to “flip” around January 15. For example, we’ve had a warm and (obviously) wet winter until the little bit of snow and cold we’ve received this week. Oftentimes that cold will extend out into March because in winters where we start out warm (like this one), early spring is chilly. But when fall is chilly and the freezing extends through the holidays (the winter of 2022-23 was an example), we sometimes get a break around the middle of January and spring arrives early. (Back home in Ohio, the weather always made for holiday cheer until after New Year’s, at which time it just became cold gray suck until about April. I was sold about moving here the moment I saw the average high temperature here in January is 45 degrees compared to 30 back home. It ain’t Florida, but it’s not that bad.)
You likely remember how I got in an argument with a meteorologist back in Odds and ends 115. Lately I’ve been getting into it with the “group expert” in a local political Facebook group, and I’m waiting on him to answer this question. (Since he’s liked to stalk my profile maybe he’ll answer here, and I edited a bit for a smoother narrative.)
So I'm going to ask this question once again: what is "normal" climate? In terms of temperature, the "normal" extremes in Salisbury are 87 degree highs in July and 27 degree lows in January. A three-degree warming difference every day would mean we would use a little more a/c in the summer but a little less heating in the winter. It would make the growing season for crops a little longer and perhaps allow for somewhat different farming strategies (for example, Delaware was once a major peach producing state centuries ago but the climate for it was better down south.)
If global warming is created by man, which is an argument I don't necessarily subscribe to given the major effects of natural forces on our weather, the advantages of development in the sense of increasing our standard of living outweigh the possibility our global temperature is rising a degree or two due to our actions. What the most extreme climate change advocates are calling for is a reduction in our standard of living to counteract a phenomenon that we cannot say for sure we have that significant an influence over.
Both man and nature have a significant ability to adapt if we let them.
So let’s talk about adaptation. If an area often floods, there are myriad ways to deal with this. The pioneers where I was raised found a simple solution: dig a lot of drainage ditches to turn the Great Black Swamp into some of our most productive farmland. We could probably do some of that in our area, but the environmentalists would have a collective cow, so it likely won’t happen.
I thought I read recently that if the sea level rose two feet in the next century like some predict it will - given the track record of those predicting it, I take that with a grain of salt - we would lose 8% of our state. But what percentage of that is productive land and how much of it can’t be built on anyway? Also, by my public school math, 24 inches in 100 years is about 1/4” per year - I think we’re smart enough to adjust to that glacial rate of change.
Being in the business I’m in as my full-time job, I have a little bit of knowledge about critical areas and why there are restrictions on building there. (This was something I had to learn about quickly when I came here because Ohio was decades behind in these types of laws. It’s the difference between being on the East Coast and the North Coast.) It’s highly discouraged to live in an area affected by rising sea levels as setbacks can make a parcel of land platted prior to these regulations unbuildable. (Granted, this rarely happens.) Developing heretofore undeveloped parcels takes hours and hours of paperwork and design to comply with codes in an attempt to make sure the development doesn’t make flooding problems worse. It’s another type of adaptation that’s usually governed by state or local codes.
Yet the codes can’t account for anomalies like receiving a foot of rain during a winter month. Then again, is that a true historical occurrence or just a return to something that was commonplace decades ago before we developed a lot of the area and had good records? In any case, we adapted: roads were temporarily closed, shelters were opened for those living in low-lying coastal areas who felt the need to evacuate, and schools cancelled their evening activities during the worst day of the storm, which I likened to an out-of-season tropical storm. Actually, the worst of the damage seemed to me all the trees that fell because of the relentless wind and saturated ground. (In which case, we are fortunate this didn’t occur in the summer as the leaves on the trees would have created more force on the weakened root system to give way.) Those who were luckless enough to have a tree fall and do damage on their property were hopefully insured against the loss.
The truth about climate change is that it’s become a handy scapegoat for whatever has gone wrong. The experts talked about a new ice age in the 1970s until we hit a different trend in the 1980s, when we began hearing about global warming. But once that forecast didn’t pan out, that’s when we started hearing the term “climate change,” a phrase that allowed them to cover all the bases. “You can’t deny the climate changes, can you?” they thunder.
Truth is, I can’t. But, like my question above, there’s really no way to know which reason is correct, so arguments can be twisted like a pretzel to get the desired result.
Until next time, also remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.