On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a warning that flooding in the Midwest will be not just “historic” and “widespread,” but “unprecedented.” At least three deaths have been connected to the flooding that has completely inundated dozens of Midwestern towns and turned thousands of Americans into climate change refugees as they seek shelter away from flooded homes. And the worst is still ahead.
According to the NOAA bulletin, two-thirds of the United States mainland faces an elevated risk for flooding through May. Major or moderate flooding threatens 25 states after previously unseen levels of rainfall spread across the nation in recent months. With streams and rivers already full to overflowing, the soil saturated, and groundwater levels elevated, any additional rain could mean almost instant disaster in many areas of the waterlogged nation.
Record flooding has already punished the upper Midwest, with Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa taking the hardest hits. Flooding is spreading down the Mississippi basin, and also affecting rivers in the eastern U.S., including areas of Tennessee and Kentucky flooded by the deluged Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. The prediction calls for flooding of structures, closure of highways, and “extensive evacuation” over thousands of square miles.
Ed Clark, director of NOAA’s National Water Center, said, “This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk for flooding in their communities.” He warned that the flooding already seen, as bad as it has been, is likely to become “more dire” over coming weeks. The area already predicted to be affected by major flooding, causing property damage, evacuation, and economic loss, already includes 13 million people.
And NOAA isn’t providing good news for the future. Outlooks for the spring indicate that precipitation levels are likely to remain high over exactly those areas already suffering the most from the current round of flooding. Major rainstorms are expected in the Midwest over the next eight to 10 days.
In addition to the direct damage done by flooding of homes and businesses and the economic damage created as industry grinds to a halt in flooded regions, the floods have an economic reach that goes far beyond even the wide space at risk of being underwater. High, fast-running rivers, ice dams, and damage to ports mean that goods transported along the nation’s waterways are either frozen in place or at risk. This could lead to localized shortages, affect prices, and further exacerbate problems for farmers already damaged by Donald Trump’s trade war.
The flooding in the Midwest follows a year in which California was ravaged by fires, which in turn followed a season of historic hurricanes that left still-unaddressed damage across Puerto Rico and brought flooding to Texas and the Southeast. While individual storms or localized droughts may not be connected to climate change, these huge events and periods of historically extreme weather are definitely connected to the changes in climate that are sweeping across America and the world. While Americans were suffering from a chaotic winter that ended with a record “bomb cyclone” that formed over the middle of the continent, Australia has been suffering through that nation’s hottest summer, which has brought not just record temperatures, but record heat-related deaths to wildlife, cattle, and humans. In some areas, temperatures exceeded 116 degrees during the day for an extended period, and barely fell below 100 at night.
When people think of “climate refugees,” the impression is often of groups driven from low-lying countries placed on the move as rising sea levels flood coastal cities. And that will happen.
But right now, thousands of Americans are already displaced from their homes by events driven by climate change. Thousands more will be huddling in shelters soon as they watch their homes and their possessions swept away, saturated, and ruined by events that are “unprecedented” and “historic” precisely because our history does not include the kind of climate we are experiencing today.