Beyond Normal
Sara Plourde
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NHPR
Last summer, we grappled with a severe drought. This summer, it rained so much, businesses in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and New Hampshire’s White Mountains feared they might lose the whole tourist season. In Vermont, people spent much of the summer cleaning up from catastrophic floods that also affected farms in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The unpredictability and volatility is anything but normal for a New England summer…but with climate change, you might say we’re now beyond normal.
In this series from the New England News Collaborative, journalists across the region worked together to tell stories about how climate change is affecting what we know, love and rely on in New England summers.
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Heat, poor air quality, rain and flooding affected New England summer theater this year. -
In New England, with extreme temperatures and excessive rain, it's been a tough growing year. While the increasing warmth could allow for new plant varieties and a longer growing season in the Northeast, southern diseases are also heading this way. -
Advocates for New England's cold-water fish — trout and salmon — say changes to their habitats are already impacting their longevity. -
More intense storms, rising sea levels, toxic algae blooms, and other environmental crises are making it harder for tribes to practice their culture and to pass it on. -
Scientists expect poison ivy will take full advantage of warmer temperatures and rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to grow faster and bigger, and become even more toxic. -
A new pilot program sends alerts to remind clinicians to talk to patients about protecting themselves on dangerously hot days, which are happening more frequently because of climate change. -
Trees provide a wide range of benefits, from filtering out air pollution, to improving mental health, to cooling city neighborhoods on hot summer days. -
Several global weather patterns were factors in the amount of rain that hammered the region. -
Volatile weather fueled by climate change has ruined nearly 3,000 acres of crops in Massachusetts, affecting more than 100 farms and costing about $15 million. And it has left farmers asking how to keep farming in a rapidly changing climate. -
Many farmers cannot replant fields until next growing season.
