The week our town's river flooded in March

I mean, we've had rain before, but last March the river near my house in Boone rose over 8 feet in two days. It washed out the community garden we'd just planted and covered the bike path in mud and trash. The cleanup took about 40 volunteers three full weekends to get things back to normal. Has anyone else had a local climate event that just felt like a big, sudden wake-up call?

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palmer.thomas7mo ago

My cousin in Vermont lost part of his barn roof last summer from a hail storm with golf ball sized stones. The weather service said it was the worst in that county for 50 years. It made me realize these weird storms aren't just one off events anymore.

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martin.jessica7mo ago

Yeah, that "not just one off events" line really hits. We had a crazy heat dome last year that just broke all the old records. It fried the big maple tree in my backyard that had been there since my grandpa was a kid. It felt like a line got crossed, like the old normal is just gone. Now every weird weather report makes me nervous.

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abby_martin284mo ago

You're all in on that "old normal is gone" idea, @martin.jessica, but I gotta push back a little... weather has always had crazy swings, we just notice them more now because of social media and 24/7 news. That heat dome was brutal for sure, but there were record freezes and blizzards in the 1800s too, people just didn't have the internet to obsess over every single one. Maybe we're just seeing the natural variability of a big climate system, not some permanent line we crossed.

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