Flooding in new York and new Jersey?

[Smartphonetoomuchoo]

Is this it? Anyone else think we have reached the point of no return where we have to deal with ridiculous flooding and fires and storms and hurricanes. And the fall out of that. I'm out. I really am. I feel sick with worry for my children, for myself, for my partner wondering whether one day he just won't come home from work? Is it just me?

yabu it'll pass
yanbu we need to prepare for the worst

Why wouldn’t your partner come home from work one day? Are they a storm chaser?

I do think we need to drastically change how behave, we are pests really, a plague on the earth. Looks like we messed it up.

What do you mean - you're out?

Yeah, it is happening. YANBU.

It's not just you. Drastic change is needed (and on so many fronts). The trouble is many people don't engage unless something bad happens directly to them...

It seems incredible to me that neither of our two largest political parties are responding in any way like they need to at this moment.

Where are you?

If the devil is six then God is seven

You mean the beginning of the End Times? I think we will kill ourselves with global warming and a mountain of plastic garbage.

Hurricane season. Happens every year in this country. Floods happen after hurricanes. It just doesn’t make international news when its not somewhere exciting that you might consider going on holiday to. Regular Americans in regular cities go through this every year. The rest of the world just doesn’t care then.

This one is nothing compared to the Galveston hurricane in 1900 with 40 ft floods and 8000 deaths.

What BritWife said.

This is hurricane season in the South and East and tornado season in the Mid-West. It's fire season here in California. Happens every year.

But yes, climate change is making the seasons last longer and hit harder.

@WeirdCouncil - my immediate reaction as well!! (Actually the ten million pounds of sludge are what came to mind first)

Yup @BritWifeInUSA and @AcrossthePond55 nailed it.

Every summer we end up inside because of forest fires and the smoke, in a couple of months we will start to lose power and rely on generators and neighbours because of windstorms, then in winter we will struggle because deliveries can’t get through and roads/stores/schools etc all close and again we rely on neighbours and generators, plus our mountain roads end blocked by avalanches. Spring brings floods and flashfloods due to the avalanches and snow melt/runoff. Then we have a few weeks breather before it starts again.

You just don’t hear about it because it’s daily/yearly life for us. Not newsworthy usually.

Is flooding/fires a new thing? Only recently started happening?

@WeirdCouncil

If the devil is six then God is seven

So we're all at sixes and sevens then...

That just about sums it up.

The weather in the US often verges on the extreme - I don't think anything has been massively unusual has it? I do sometimes think that people probably weren't meant to live in North America as the climate isn't really that hospitable.

The flooding of basement apartments in NY is heartbreaking.

I think, as we don't get too impacted by serious weather events in the UK apart from a bit of flooding there's a bit of an" Im alright Jack" mentality. But the UK, at least where I live in the East Coast has been unseasonably cloudy this August, cloud doesn't seem like much of an issue compared to floods and hurricanes and doesn't cause the awful loss of life to humans and other animals ofcourse but it has knock on effects on our pollinators, crop growth, even solar energy generation. These extra clouds will have been seeded from the excess particulates and cloud nuclei in the atmosphere from the wildfires in America and Canada. It really is a global problem and until all countries start working together we really can't make much headway.

The extreme weather is definitely getting worse, in the US and everywhere else. My son was in a hospital in NYC having a medical procedure and the power went out (luckily there were generators). The subways were flooded. We are in Croatia and our flight home is tomorrow and hundreds or maybe thousands of flights are canceled, but it isn't New Orleans.

The British Idles is getting smaller and smaller every year..... look at the erosion on coastlines!

Climate change is responsible for an increase in the average intensity of hurricanes across the globe. Warmer seas = more fuel for hurricanes to develop. Warmer air = greater volumes of potentialrain. For every degree warmer, air can hold around 7% more moisture.

Rainfall levels in the NE US due to Ida broke records.

Newark saw 21cm of rain. Some areas saw over 30cm of rain. Over 8cm in one hour in Central Park. Measure that out with your hands, imagine it lying over the ground, then think of the impact of adding in buildings, hills etc.

I don't know why people are basically saying its normal? why are you lying? this isn't normal. Its making news because the wildfires are bad. the floods are bad. Worse than normal. I don't understand why nobody cares.
are you scared that if you admit there is a problem we will have to deal with it?

My partner isn't a fucking storm chaser. he's a man who works hours away for days on end and if these floods are happening more often and killing people then surely its reasonable to worry that he may be one of the unlucky ones who die . or the even unluckiest ones who come home to a dead family, drowned.
I live in a bowl, hills basically every where around me. If 8cm of rain falls here my house will be flooded and thats scary. London flooded. New York. thats not normal. I've never known that to be normal.
I'm not surprised, where is the water supposed to go?

Yes it’s worrying. What does ‘I’m out’ mean?

Global warming is worrying but it’s a slow process - saying it might cause your partner not to come home is frankly ridiculous.

Why are you calling posters who gave measured reasonable responses liars?

I don't know why people are basically saying its normal? why are you lying? this isn't normal. Its making news because the wildfires are bad. the floods are bad. Worse than normal. I don't understand why nobody cares.

Yes, the wildfires are bad. The point is they are no worse than in other recent years. I've lived in CA for over 60 years. Were they this bad when I was a child, a teen, a young adult? No. But they managed the forests differently then. We're now saddled with unprecedented under growth and that's what makes the fires move so swiftly and so hard to fight. Climate change contributes to it, yes, but it's not as simple as that one factor.

NYC 'flooded' during superstorm Sandy, so did parts of Jersey. It's basically concrete jungles with lots of underground that 'catch' the water. But it's not an apocalyptic 'Noah's Ark' flood. The problem is a lack of flood management and infrastucture. In CA we've invested a lot of money into flood control basins, channels, dams, levees and the like, so we don't get the catastrophic flooding in bad rain years.

It sounds to me as if you have terrible anxiety over this.