Climate change has brought more extreme rain, snow to Maine

Metropolis staff try Jackson Hill Highway in Auburn after it was washed out in August following heavy rain. Andree Kehn/Solar Journal, file

Maine is getting wetter throughout all seasons, however it’s the growing depth of the precipitation – and the flooded basements, crop illness, and washed-out culverts and roads that may include it – that has local weather planners, farmers, and engineers scrambling to organize.

Whereas the long run impression of sea stage rise is a high concern in Maine and different coastal states because the local weather warms, the growing frequency of utmost climate occasions right here is already having statewide impacts.

In keeping with the brand new Nationwide Local weather Evaluation, within the sprawling area it defines because the Northeast, the variety of excessive rain or snow occasions is up 62%, the most important improve within the nation. Two-inch rain days have been up 49% when evaluating averages between 1958 and 2022, whereas 5-inch days have been up 102%.

How does Maine stack up? The evaluation’s conclusions in regards to the Northeast are primarily based on information from 13 states, from Maryland and West Virginia to Maine. It doesn’t specify what number of heavy rain days anyone state inside the area has racked up.

An impartial overview of 5 long-term climate stations in Maine performed by the state climatologist, Sean Birkel, suggests a number of the regional excessive precipitation tendencies maintain true in Maine: The variety of 2- and 3-inch rain days is rising quick. The variety of 4-inch rain days is growing, too, however slowly.

5-inch rain days could have doubled within the Northeast, however in Maine, they’re declining, Birkel mentioned – however they’re so uncommon that the decline has little statistical worth. Since 2000, Portland has had three 5-inch rain days, and Bangor has had one; Augusta, Caribou, and Farmington have had none.

The Nationwide Local weather Evaluation places most of its Northeast deal with the here-and-now impacts of the acute snow and rain days already occurring however predicts this excessive precipitation will proceed to extend in frequency and ferocity beneath all international warming situations heading into the long run.

The Nationwide Local weather Evaluation Interactive Atlas Explorer tasks steep will increase in excessive rain for elements of Maine in sure dire warming situations. For instance, Aroostook County will see an 83% leap in excessive rain days, the largest of any U.S. county, beneath the 7.2-degree Fahrenheit warming situation.

In the meantime, the 2- and 3-inch storms occurring extra usually in Maine now are already wreaking havoc on a state that should additionally wrestle with seasonal droughts, Birkel mentioned. Pinballing forwards and backwards between extremes, he mentioned, could make it onerous for anyone to plan for the long run.

Excessive precipitation occasions and subsequent flooding may cause quite a lot of pricey issues together with property injury, misplaced tourism days, sewer overflows that contaminate consuming water and personal wells, and shellfish mattress closures.

Sea stage rise compounds the flood dangers alongside Maine’s shoreline, however the flash flood dangers posed by the rise in 2- and 3-inch rain days are being felt in Maine’s inside, too, taking a toll on Maine’s state transportation community and its economically beneficial farm and forest lands.

In its 2020 report, “The Value of Doing Nothing,” the Maine Local weather Council estimated climate-related flooding from overflowing rivers and streams might trigger as much as $2.4 billion in whole constructing losses and wipe out one other $2.6 billion a 12 months in jobs.

The Maine Division of Transportation started to include excessive precipitation occasions into its design requirements and planning course of about seven or eight years in the past when employees began to notice a rise within the variety of culverts being misplaced, chief engineer Joyce Taylor mentioned.

Earlier than that, the company used to design its culverts and different transportation tasks to resist a 25-year storm, however now it designs all its new tasks to be prepared for a 100-year storm, Taylor mentioned. Whereas not indestructible, these new tasks have all withstood Maine’s more and more excessive climate.

“I inform folks on a regular basis, everybody talks about sea stage rise, (however) we’re shedding stuff inland,” mentioned Taylor, who additionally serves on the Maine Local weather Council. “I’m not shedding it on the coast proper now for MaineDOT. It’s inland.”

The company is about to conduct a statewide vulnerability evaluation of its infrastructure, particularly its inland culverts, to see which of them have to be made larger to permit for extra water to move throughout considered one of these forecasted excessive precipitation occasions – even when the buildings themselves aren’t that previous.

An estimated 2,300 of Maine’s street culverts valued at $76.6 million are in peril of being overtopped.

Taylor mentioned she has nightmares sparked by the near-miss tales she has heard of automobiles, together with one faculty bus, driving over flooded culverts that shortly after gave means. Standing water on the roadway can forestall drivers from realizing the culvert or street earlier than them has washed away, she mentioned.

4 culverts have failed in heavy storms to this point this 12 months, washing away roads in Jay and Cyr Plantation.

Excessive precipitation poses a threat to householders in an underinsured state like Maine, the place lower than 1% of housing models are coated by flood insurance coverage, based on Mark Bove, a New Jersey meteorologist who works within the insurance coverage trade and one of many evaluation’s authors.

The federally run Nationwide Flood Insurance coverage Program covers about 12% to 14% of annual flood damages within the U.S. This protection hole leaves hundreds of thousands at monetary threat within the Northeast because the frequency and severity of utmost precipitation occasions are anticipated to extend, based on the report.

Solely two counties within the Northeast have greater than 50% of housing models insured for flood. On common, 6.5% of housing models in coastal counties have flood protection in contrast with 1.3% inland. In Maine, county flood insurance coverage charges run from as little as low as 0.4% in Androscoggin to 2.7% in York.

Flood insurance coverage protection varies by geographic area, and is usually highest inside a mile of the coast, however Bove mentioned most flood threat maps – and the mortgage corporations that use them – don’t think about flash floods when calculating flooding threat, though that’s the flooding that excessive rain occasions will convey.

“I’m positive our associates in Montpelier by no means thought it will occur to them,” Bove mentioned, referring to the floodwaters that ravaged Vermont’s capitol this summer season. “I think about insurance coverage one of many entrance traces of local weather resiliency for common folks such as you or me.”

The report additionally famous the risk that excessive precipitation poses to the regional agricultural economic system.

“Having an excessive amount of water on a farm is usually more difficult than not having sufficient,” mentioned Sarah Simon, a local weather resilience specialist at Maine Farmland Belief. “Should you don’t have sufficient, you irrigate. You probably have an excessive amount of, it’s a must to get artistic.”

Simon works with farmers to discover ways to hold their farms wholesome in a altering Maine and put together their land and their enterprise plans for brand new local weather situations. That might imply totally different agricultural methods, totally different merchandise to develop, elevate or promote, and totally different finish markets.

She is at present working with 16 farmers who need to enhance their soil well being by means of strategies like contour planting, cowl crops, or no-till planting to assist handle Maine’s water extremes, which may result in erosion, water evaporation, weed progress, and soil compaction.

“In Maine, we now have plenty of new farmers who’re shopping for previous dairies which have fallen on onerous occasions and turning them into fruit and vegetable farms,” Simon mentioned. “The sloped fields of an previous dairy farm are particularly difficult to farm in moist situations.”

Along with the potential for root rot, heavy rain additionally will increase the chance of fungal illness, mentioned David Handley, a vegetable specialist with the College of Maine Agricultural Extension Service. Raindrops splashing off puddles can unfold fungal spores all through a subject earlier than something will be achieved.

“By the point it’s dry sufficient for a tractor or a fungicide, it’s over. You’ve misplaced the entire subject,” he mentioned.

Some farmers are dusting off previous strategies to handle the extreme rainfall and their seasonal droughts. They’re “tiling” their fields – putting in pipes just a few ft beneath the topsoil to divert moisture within the subject away from the crops and right into a retaining pond that may be tapped in the course of the dry season, Handley mentioned.

To permit for soil drainage, they’re carving raised crop beds out of the fields by hand or machine.

In Maine, 10-inch raised beds are sometimes coated to offer the warmth wanted to increase a rising season, management weeds, and keep away from soil compaction. However raised beds can dry out shortly throughout seasonal droughts. Handley waters his raised-bed strawberry crop with a easy drip irrigation system made with a plastic tube tucked beneath the plastic mattress cowl.

He didn’t want to make use of it this spring, which was unusually moist, he mentioned.

It’s not all unhealthy information, Handley mentioned. Local weather change goes to increase Maine’s comparatively quick rising season, which has already acquired Maine farmers speaking about rising grapes for wine or candy potatoes. However an extended season additionally will convey new challenges, like fall labor shortages and extra blight and pests.

“Strive as we’d, we will’t management the climate,” Handley mentioned. “All we will hope to do is adapt.”

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