Despite the Patriots winning the Super Bowl, January and February were not kind months for the people of Boston and New England. By February 10th, more than 60 inches of snow in 30 days fell on the city and parts of the wider region, closing schools, shuttering businesses and offices, interrupting road, rail and air travel, paralyzing the region.
Across the Northeast and down highway I-95 as far as Philadelphia, the massive snowfalls caused disruption and damage totaling millions of dollars. Factor in the cost of all the lost business, and the tally reaches into the billions.
This is the new normal for weather in the US. Global climate change increases the chances that the once-a-century event is now a once-every-twenty-years occurrence. The country is now experiencing more severe weather events: long droughts in the Southwest, destructive wildfires in the West, and more intense hurricanes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
I write from personal experience of this new normal. Living in the Washington, DC, region, I survived Snowmageddon, a three-foot snow dump, in February 2010. Two years later, I endured a one-week power outage in what was the hottest week in June on record after a derecho – a fast-moving wind rarely seen east of the Appalachians before the summer heat begins to intensify – moved in from the Midwest, felling trees and cutting off power.
