Just a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a middle school science teacher and I mentioned that I speak Marshallese.  She remembered that her class had been looking at footage of recent inundations and king tides in the Marshall Islands.  She asked what people did when it floods.  I explained that the Marshall Islands has developed climate disaster plans for each atoll.  Last year, 55 countries including the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Fiji, Tonga, and PNG submitted National Adaptation Plans to the UNFCC.   She commented that climate change seemed so far away.  I paused and acknowledged that it is painful to see the coral reefs bleaching and the constant flooding.  But, I had to tell her to just look around.  Climate change is not happening somewhere else.  It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening here. Just this past Memorial weekend, a severe weather outbreak resulted in tornadoes and almost 30 deaths across several states (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kentucky).

Drone video and photos show the resulting destruction in Rogers, AR after an EF3 tornado hit the town early Sunday, May 26 2024, just before 2:00 am. The tornadoes path was 1.5 miles wide and 7.4 miles long with winds between 115-125 mph.