Back when we were starting our careers in journalism around the turn of the millennium, the term climate change was just being adopted by scientists, who realized that the concept of “global warming” will not accurately reflect the changes in our atmosphere that we are now seeing every day.
This summer on the East End has been marked by many climatological events, despite the fact that we’ve not, to date, experienced too many days of extreme heat.
Pictured Above: Traffic lights on Route 58 in Riverhead didn’t work for several days after the July 4 storm.
From deluges accompanied by lightning and sudden, severe winds that washed out roads, uprooting and felling large trees and knocking out power, to days in a haze of smoke from Canadian wildfires that seem to produce their own weather — cooler and breezier than predicted — the one constant of our new millennium is the whipsaw of changes in the weather.
How quickly we can adapt to those changes will be the hallmark of human survival.
This Fourth of July was a prime example of our stuttering progress toward adapting to a changing climate. The day was broiling, but we all put on brave faces and our best red, white & blue outfits and went out parading and beachgoing and barbecuing, then settled in for an evening of fireworks. It was a day as American as apple pie.
But what happened during the fireworks was downright apocalyptic.
We’d heard weather reports that severe thunderstorms were a possibility late that evening, but at the time they seemed like they may pose a welcome break from the heat.
No one wanted to cancel fireworks displays that had been in the works for years, and many fireworks were moved earlier as the forecast deteriorated. But the end result is that thousands of people were out and about recreating as a massive storm cell descended on Long Island — a recipe for a serious disaster. We’re surprised no one here was killed.
We were listening to the police scanner in our office as we sorted through our parade photos that evening, and we could tell from the tone in the normally calm and collected dispatchers’ voices that they were overwhelmed by the deluge of reports — so much happened in the half hour after the fireworks ended that many harrowing events weren’t even reported in local newspapers.
An unsanctioned fireworks display on Kenney’s Beach in Southold lit beach grass on fire just as the hurricane-force early winds of the thunderstorm hit, spreading fire through the grass and toward adjacent homes before it was, thankfully, put out by the ensuing deluge.
Five people watching a fireworks display in Flanders Bay needed to be rescued from a sandbar in the midst of the storm.
Families traveling home through the wind and the rain found major roads blocked by fallen trees, and a photographer for Riverhead Local reported a tree fell on his car as he and his fiancé were returning home from a fireworks display, necessitating rescue by the volunteer fire department.
And when many returned home, they found their power was out, and in some cases would still be out for days.
We don’t have a tally of all the calls received by local fire departments in the aftermath of the storm — only anecdotes. Riverhead had 22. Flanders had 14 and Southampton had 32, all of which were answered by volunteers.
But now, all of that is nearly a month in our rear-view mirror as we face new challenges every day — some driven by climate, and some not.
What has made human history successful has been our adaptability. Our families — our children and grandchildren, people alive today — will be the humans who face the biggest challenge to our adaptability since the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted away from Long Island’s shores more than 20,000 years ago. Are we ready?
