I don’t want to be writing this again
Photo courtesy of NOAA
When I am skiing and the snow ‘whoomphs’, it tells me something vital about stability, and I change course if I’m exposed to avalanche terrain. The climate is now telling us something vital about a set of risks to our communities and our planet—it’s time we listen.
A week ago I wrote about Hurricane Helene, now recovery from Milton is also underway. This is not normal.
Extreme weather is a cost of climate change and none of us are not exempt from paying the bill when it comes due. Back-to-back hurricanes bearing down on millions of Americans show us the presence, power, and pushback nature wields.
Hurricanes intensify over the Atlantic Ocean as warm surface water drives atmospheric convection. Warmer surface temperatures and a warmer atmosphere mean greater intensity and greater variability. Paired with sea-level rise, coastal development, and aging infrastructure, storms are coming at a greater cost, delivering more damage. Higher intensity storms reach further inland, and when inland storms stall out they can produce extreme precipitation— this means more flooding in communities that might not expect it.
I spoke with a POW friend and Team POW member Will Stikeleather about Hurricane Milton. Will is a Meteorologist for the North America Peril Advisory team at Guy Carpenter, and he said this storm was, “one of the most intense Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history at its peak.”
Will told me that what made Milton remarkable was both the storm’s strength and how it formed. The hurricane recorded the second fastest intensification on record, growing from a category 1 to a category 5 storm in just 18 hours. It also attained the second-lowest pressure ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico – Meteorologists refer to 1013.25mb as average pressure, severe storms can drop to around 950mb, Hurricane Katrina measured 902 mb. Hurricane Milton bottomed out at 897 millibars.
Luckily the storm weakened before landfall and missed directly hitting the large population center of Tampa Bay, but extreme wind, storm surge, and widespread flooding still hit communities across west-central Florida.
Milton also produced a deadly tornado outbreak over Florida, forcing the National Weather Service to issue 126 tornado warnings across the state, the second-highest daily total for a state on record. Will also noted, “Landfalling hurricanes are a particularly extreme event due to the amount of hazards they can produce at once. Damaging winds, dangerous storm surge, and freshwater flooding from rainfall can impact a community in just one storm.”
The Southeast might not be known for winter recreation, but it is home to 7,700 POW community members, 62 National Parks, nearly 90,000,000 Americans, and millions of runners, climbers, hikers, bikers, paddlers, fishermen, swimmers, and other outdoor enthusiasts.
Recent projections show climate change likely to increase the frequency of category 4 or 5 storms by 13%. The past two weeks have already left much of the Southeast feeling the acute impacts of extreme weather. These communities need assistance.
We shared resources on Helene relief efforts last week; please also support relief efforts for the communities recovering from Hurricane Milton by considering a donation here:
It’s hard to hear anything over the drum of our lives. The engines, and cell phones, and social media, and individuality, and cardboard boxes, and tarmac, and material all make noise. It’s a background static that drowns out and distracts from all else. For some perspective, I checked in with my friend and fellow Alaskan Warren Jones. Warren is a Yup’ik philosopher whose work explores just this challenge by bringing together Alaska Native perspectives on understanding environmental change.
It’s time to listen.
A note from Warren Jones:
“The earth speaks, who is listening?
How do we listen to the planet? It’s not simple. Communication happens across a spectrum. We all know that communication takes many forms, even what we think of as ‘normal communication’ can come through both implicit body language and more explicitly, languages, such as sign language. So when we listen to the planet and listen to our relatives in the environment they can tell us things without saying a word.
For example, all across Alaska salmon are following a concerning trend. Even in places where the runs are healthy, other species in the same stream are struggling. When the salmon show up in smaller numbers and smaller sizes they are telling us something. What they are telling us with this information is there is something happening in our streams and oceans. It is up to us to interpret what they are telling us and to figure it out.
When our glaciers melt, when our sea ice melts it is telling us something. Hurricanes and extreme weather, tell us something. Everything communicates if one knows how to listen. Across the world, scientists have been listening and learning to listen and they hear, and many more are beginning to understand what the earth is telling us and it is telling us things are not ok.“
Author: Alex Lee
Alex Lee is an environmental philosopher, writer, fisherman, gardener, backcountry advocate, skier, and wanderer of wild places. Alex studies moral obligations and environmental problem solving as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Culture and Environment at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Alaska. His research focuses on applied environmental philosophy, climate change, and conservation policy. He earned his Ph.D. in environmental ethics from […]
