Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.
First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois.
In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.
“Any one of these intense rainfall events has a low chance of occurring in a given year,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at the nonprofit organization Climate Central, “so to see events that are historic and record-breaking in multiple parts of the country over the course of one week is even more alarming.”
It’s the kind of statistic, several experts said, that is both eye-opening and likely to become more common because of climate change.
Don’t worry, it is not just in the US.
There was devastating floods in Germany about 4 years ago, killing some 200 people. Just a few months before the ruling “conservative” party CDU lead coalition in one of the states affected badly had scrapped some flood protection laws. During the election campaign for the federal election the chancellor candidate of the “conservative” party was laughing his ass off in the background as the German president held a commemoration speech for the victims in one of the villages heavily destroyed.
The CDU came out strongest again in the next state level elections, including in the areas that were destroyed by the floods and had many people killed.