And the rains, they came

Get used to it, climate-change-deniers

As we work our way through alphabet of tropical storms and hurricanes this season, for the second time in less than two weeks, we battened down our hatches for yet another tropical storm, this one named Ida.

On a personal note, we only lost a few tree limbs, but my neighbors had a good chunk of their yard wash into the street. When the rain woke me at 1 a.m., I dashed about shutting windows all the way, because even the little slivers I left open for fresh air was an invitation for the deluge to come inside. I heard a rumbling noise — turns out, it was the rocks rolling down the neighbors’ steep driveway — but the rain made it impossible to see even to the street.

Central Park got a little more than 7 inches of rain, and subways flooded in New York City. Nearby Norwich, Conn., got 8 inches, and a highway was closed after it was flooded with two feet of water. Yesterday morning, when I walked around my house looking for damage, the ground was squishy, and this was the remnant of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ida. It puts into perspective the power and devastation the people in Louisiana faced and face.

This is what we can anticipate — more and more severe weather that challenge an infrastructure that has long since been insufficient to handle less severe weather, at least here in New England. As for our ability to clean up after the mess, we are being asked to lower our expectations by multi-billion dollar public utilities such as Eversource, a main supplier of electricity here. Before Henri, that company tried to do a pre-emptive strike and warn that if the storm hit hard, some of its customers could be without power for as long as 21 days. Ha, ha, Eversource. Had that been the case, expect my monthly payment to be very, very late.

Yesterday morning, I walked up the hill that is my neighbors’ driveway to offer to help toss fallen rocks into the woods, but the neighbors had already assembled a small crew of machines driven by family members to move the debris. If we continue to insist that climate change doesn’t affect us, maybe that’s what the rest of us need — a ready army of backhoes and earth movers, to push against the next storm.