Another Day with "y" In It

WaPoo tries to scare us again.  Sea-level rise is ‘the hidden threat’ for Anne Arundel waterfront homes. So hidden you can look it up on the internet:

Shady Side and southern Anne Arundel “are on fire with people buying. Prices are ramping up.”

But those dream homes could become a nightmare, according to scientists who say sea level rise is coming to flood homes and vital roads in areas such as Anne Arundel County. Stansfield didn’t know this because, like homeowners and real estate agents around the state, she wasn’t given information scientists say is vital to the future of homes like hers.

Real estate agents such as Stansfield use FEMA’s 100-year flood plain maps to determine whether homes are required to have flood insurance, which many interpret to mean they are safe from flooding. But climate scientists say FEMA’s maps shouldn’t be used to predict flooding.

Bill Sweet, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sea-level rise expert living in Annapolis, said that because FEMA only considers historical events when making its flood maps, they don’t take sea-level rise into account. “Past risk is not the best predictor of future risk,” Sweet said. “I think that’s sort of the hidden threat.”

Sea levels are even higher now than when FEMA’s Anne Arundel County maps were developed in 2015, he noted, and risks are only increasing. A storm with a one in 100 chance of occurring will have about a one in 10 chance by 2050, Sweet said. 

Yep, 3.67 mm per year times 5 years is about 18 cms or 0.7 inches. And that rise is not changing as time goes on. If your house can be threatened by 0.7 inches of sea level rise in 5 years, you live too damn close.