In the hustle and bustle of being a student teacher and life in general, it's sometimes tricky to catch a break. When I got home yesterday afternoon, I found a window of time to rest. I gave myself a rare moment of permission to relax properly, laying in bed watching Netflix, listening to the rain batter the house outside.
As gripping as my show was, my attention turned to something more interesting happening outside of my window. The rain was no longer just battering but pounding the side of the house. Puddles were starting to form in areas of the yard they normally don’t. I got up and paced the house to observe what was happening out of all of our windows. The ingredients were starting to look uncannily like the big flood of June last year.
“I kind of want to go out and take photos before it gets dark,” I told my mom, Steffanie.
“Well, I’ll go with you,” she replied.
I returned to my cozy bed to watch Netflix, but then the rain really grew into a thunderous presence. I could no longer ignore it. I went back into the living room and invited my mom out for a photo adventure in St. Davids.
Surely enough, the weather radar and unusually excessive pooling on our yard were successful indicators as to what was about to unfold. The problem we saw growing and growing in real time was incredible.
Approaching St. Davids, ditches were swelling to their brink, and meek little streams had turned into violent rapids. Some of the suburban streets near St. Davids school were turned into rivers, where a sheet of brown water flowed quickly across the urban lands.
By Gales Gas Bar, there was over a foot of water on the road. Some houses appeared as “islands”, as water rushing down the Niagara Escarpment was too much for the land to keep up with.
As seen in the photos with familiar landmarks such as Chateau des Charmes Winery and the suburbs across from The Grist, the water was behaving in ways it perhaps never has. It may have even been worse than the June 2024 flood.
Like the damaging flood of last year, our basement got flooded yet again. Upon rushing out the door this morning, the drone of various fans hummed away down there. My brother, Isaac was again left unimpressed yet not surprised as his room began its long journey of drying out.
This is where a discussion in our family turned into the broader topic of what is happening all over the world. This type of basement soaking used to occur once every ten years or so. Now, it seems poised to happen every year. And every year, I’ve noticed, we also have a handful of times where we get to that 90% threshold of the water coming into the basement. In other words, we were this close many times.
Consider how we haven’t even properly entered thunderstorm season yet, despite last night’s remarkable light show. While standing in those frigid waters in my Crocs last night to take photos, I was adrenalized yet very wary of the risk involved, with lightning bolts cracking all around me as I stood in the water.
So, what is my family considering? We have essentially accepted the reality that this is becoming more common, and we need to adapt. Just last week, funnily enough, I was teaching my students about the difference between environmental determinism and environmental possibilism. The former term refers to how nature’s forces determine where we could or shouldn’t live, whereas the latter term discusses how we can choose to stay and “fight” nature with adaptation and innovation. Nobody is moving anytime soon in my family, so we are talking about how climate change-fuelled incidents are pushing us to adapt and upgrade our sump pumps, or how to reconsider drainage strategies for our yard.
Climate change fuels the frequency and intensity of these precipitation events. For the last two decades, scientific models have accurately predicted that eastern North America will be prone to more severe rainfalls over time. As I have howled in these articles for The NOTL Local before, it also doesn’t help that we turned St. Davids into a concrete bowl where water can’t be absorbed by the soil and forests that once existed. That part is on our decision makers and developers.
The impromptu storm-chasing session with my mom was exhilarating, fascinating and concerning all at once. I was reminded of a time in my life where I was pondering my career path, as I was pretty close to pursuing my 2nd place dream job as a storm chaser. I still try it on for size and enjoy it immensely. I feel that people like you seeing these photos and understanding the enormous implications behind them is super important.
Based on everything we know and the hard lessons learned, there is one thing I can guarantee you - this will happen again.
For a photo gallery with more images from this week's storm click here.
