Happy Nice Mall

In closing this thread, I came across a video of a submerged highway on Twitter just outside of Vancouver. He was not alone. British Columbia’s densely populated urban heart was cut off from the rest of Canada by flooding and mudslides after an atmospheric river crossed. The country’s busiest port lost access to rail service and its containers were stranded. Hundreds of drivers had to be rescued from highways with slides by military helicopters. The only way to reach the rest of the country by road was to take a detour from the United States.

The Flood followed a hot, dry summer when several cities in the region broke long-standing temperature records as a heat dome covered most of the Pacific Northwest. By the end of August, drought had settled across the province. Home to old-growth temperate rainforest, Vancouver Island has hit level 5 drought conditions, British Columbia’s most severe classification. Hundreds of wildfires covered the area with ash, and the city itself was engulfed in smoke. The charred landscape left by the summer drought made the fall floods that much worse. As I watched the video of a highway covered in brown, muddy water, I realized I was watching a sad microcosm of this issue’s premise: The way many of us initially experience climate change will be through the water—either too much or not enough. we will overflow. Or burn. Or both. This issue brings stories of how changes in the water cycle are happening all over the world as we begin to experience climate change.