Miami may be the poster child of rising waters in the U.S., but further inland, states are grappling with torrential flooding that is becoming the new norm.
The Great Flood of 2019 caused destroyed acres of farmland and caused billions in damage throughout the Midwest. And scientists predict that there’s more climate-related precipitation to come.
What does that mean for America’s aging infrastructure? “It’s absolutely going to fail for future climate events,” warns Martha Shulski of the Nebraska State Climate Office. “If you're not planning for the climate of 2040 or 2060 then there's going to be failure. There's going to be impacts in a very extreme way perhaps.”
Are we ready for the next Great Flood? How can both data science and lived experience help us prepare for too much water?
“We had one of the snowiest winters on record in Lincoln and Omaha,” reports Martha Shulski of the Nebraska Climate Office. She’s describing the weather conditions and events that led to what has become known as the “Great Flood of 2019.”
“2019 was actually one of the wettest years on record for the upper Midwest,” Shulski continues. “Snowpack sitting on the ground, lots of ice in the rivers. So the conditions were ripe such that when we did get that strong storm system move across the country...the setup was there.”
The Missouri River and its tributaries swelled above their banks throughout Nebraska, Missouri, South Dakota, Iowa and Kansas, setting record levels in 42 locations. Over a million acres of farmland were flooded, and the cost of damages and emergency response mounted into the billions.
One lesson that could be taken away from that disaster is that our aging dams and levees were woefully unprepared for such vast amounts of water. And climatologists predict that there’s more climate-related precipitation to come. Is America’s infrastructure ready for the next Great Flood?
“It’s absolutely going to fail for future climate events,” Shulski warns. “If you're not planning for the climate of 2040 or 2060 then there's going to be failure. There's going to be impacts in a very extreme way perhaps.”
Tracking floods, hurricanes and other volatile weather events in order to prevent future destruction may seem like the province of data scientists and weather nerds. But those with a stake in planning next season’s harvest have been doing this work for generations.
“When you ask a rancher or farmer how they make year to year decisions, they will go and bring out a notebook with all the detailed notes about weather and climate on their farm or ranch,” says Julia Kumari Drapkin. After 15 years as a climate reporter, Kumari Drapkin noticed “the disconnect between people’s every day daily experiences and what the climate models were telling folks.”
Kumari Drapkin created ISeeChange, a website that allows people to contribute observations about climate change in their communities, “to kind of create a mechanism for people’s every day experiences to inform models and vice versa.”
Ed Kearns is a data scientist with First Street Foundation, which maps flood risk throughout the country.
“Most neighborhoods today may not be aware of what their flood risk is; most of them aren’t aware of the adaptations that surround them,” Kearns says. “We take for granted that many of our cities are very well engineered, great civil servants that have worked hard to protect our neighborhoods. But with that comes a lack of awareness.
“And so by making the flood risk information available to everyone freely we’re hoping to level that playing field.”
