On August 10, NOAA scientists predicted that the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season would contain an “above-normal “amount of activity due to a combination of climate change and El Nino conditions. This announcement featured a list of tropical cyclone names long enough for a kindergarten class roster without including Pacific storms like Hurricane Hilary, which recently wreaked havoc in the West.
While the East Coast expects and has experience with hurricane season, the West is much less prepared. An unprecedented tropical storm warning was received by parts of the Southwest and Mexico’s Baja California, and Hilary’s unfortunate physical impacts revealed a startling lack of preparation.
Pacific coast hurricanes and their potential strength are difficult to track. The existing data only spans 35 years, providing limited insight into where storms may make landfall, how they gain strength, and what their impacts may be on the West Coast.
The climatic whiplash brought to California by Hilary illustrates the extremes brought by climate change. Dry areas in Southern California reacted to the deluge equivalent to a year’s worth of rain with mud flows and fallen trees. Road closures were frequent; entire towns experienced power outages. Cars were stranded in waist-level waters, sometimes swept down the street and then entrenched in mud. And to top it all off, an earthquake.
The storm was a test of the region’s climate resilience. Inan era of increasing hurricane activity as well as wildfires, extreme temperatures, and other climate changes, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) rightly contain about $15 billion in funding to bolster climate resiliency nationwide — including $11.2 billion specifically focused on flooding, according to Water Program Portal’s Opportunities Dashboard.
To illustrate, the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program housed in IIJA offers $1 billion annually in competitive grants for state, local, and Tribal governments. Additionally, the complementary Flood Mitigation Assistance program offers $3.5 billion in funding annually; as such the two programs’ awards are lumped together on the EPA’s website. These programs’ wide-ranging design allows for funding to address “future risks” from drought and wildfires to flooding, hurricanes, and earthquakes.
For the 2022 fiscal year, the programs received over $4.6 billion in funding requests, including a 15 percent increase in applications from Economically Disadvantaged Rural Communities, signaling that municipalities nationwide are increasingly worried about or willing to prepare for new climate realities.
These projects often are aimed at making existing communities more resilient. However, where climate impacts are too extreme, communities look to managed retreat and relocation. Over $70 million in funding to support these efforts was allocated in the 2022 fiscal year.
IIJA’s Tribal Climate Resilience – Community Relocation program provides $130 million to Tribal governments, dispensed via cooperative agreements. The 2018 National Climate Assessment indicated that community relocation and generalized retreat from coastal areas would be unavoidable, leaving managed retreat — or a planned movement of people and assets away from climate risks— as an important adaptation and resilience strategy.
The Community Relocation program is meant to do just that: implement managed retreat and provide relocation routes, as well as some expansion and protect-in-place options, due to climate change and environmental degradation on Tribal lands. A 2023 report by the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Tribal Climate Resilience Branch indicated that multiple Tribes are exploring relocation options, especially as sea levels rise, ocean acidification intensifies, coastlines degrade, and traditional ways of life are threatened.
Coastal communities have much to do to build their resilience to storms and flooding. After recent intense drought spells that turn into flashflood conditions with rain, more Western municipalities are fleshing out their local evacuation plans and disaster preparedness. But top-down initiatives such as the aforementioned programs are incredibly important to catalyzing and carrying out climate resiliency measures.
