--- title: "Issue 56" canonical: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/56" publication: "The Docket" publisher: "The Docket" language: "en-US" guide: "https://anchor.is/docket/llms.txt" permalink: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/56" issue: 56 description: "We can't stop thinking about Shayd and Laurie Pecor. Their house in Barre, Vermont floods, and Shayd won't sell that risk to some stranger who doesn't know better, so they asked the city for a federal buyout. The city said no, as it did to 40 of 67 households, partly because every family that leaves takes its taxes with it. Their way out came down to someone else's arithmetic. We kept finding that all through this issue, and we suspect a few of your own choices work the same way." authors: ["David Kern","Seth D. Carrington","Maya Jiménez","Ivy Marlowe","Wren Castellano","Yuki Tanabe"] published: 2026-11-02 updated: 2026-10-31 articles: 103 --- # The Docket > The Docket is a weekly publication about the decisions climate change is already putting in front of Americans: whether to buy the generator, whether the flood insurance is enough, whether to stay in the city you love. It follows the people making those choices now. It treats climate anxiety as a reasonable response to real conditions. It won't tell you what to do, but it shows the tradeoffs clearly. [Read on the website]() ## Issue 56 We can't stop thinking about Shayd and Laurie Pecor. Their house in Barre, Vermont floods, and Shayd won't sell that risk to some stranger who doesn't know better, so they asked the city for a federal buyout. The city said no, as it did to 40 of 67 households, partly because every family that leaves takes its taxes with it. Their way out came down to someone else's arithmetic. We kept finding that all through this issue, and we suspect a few of your own choices work the same way. ### [Human Stories]() Stories of communities and individuals adapting to unprecedented environmental change - [Third Street Wasn't on Barre's Buyout List]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Feature Story The river came through Shayd and Laurie Pecor's house in Barre, Vermont, in July 2023. They paid for four months of repairs with insurance and savings. A year later, to the day, the river came back. - [Pies Don't Move You Up, an Interview With the Maine Pump Technician Who Checks Before Anyone Says Drill]() — Published 2026-10-30 Dot Pitless keeps a clipboard on the dash of her truck, wedged between a clamp meter and a weighted steel tape. On it are names written in three colors of ink. She is a licensed pump installer in Oxford County, Maine, and she has firm opinions about pressure switches. She also does not exist. Neither does the fall of 2029, where we found her. At press time, that year had not yet gotten around to happening. - [Colorado Insurers Now Have to Show How They Scored Your Fire Risk]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-30 You spent August feeding juniper into a rented chipper and screening the attic vents so embers can't drift in. Since October 1, Colorado law says your home insurer has to show you what it made of all that. You get your wildfire score, where it sits between the best and worst possible, what about your lot pushed it up or down, and how work like yours would change it. If you think the score is wrong, you can appeal, with proof. - [David Mueller Has a Buyer for His Perennial Grain. Most Farmers Who Ask Get Turned Away.]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Two Work Stories David Mueller has been planting Kernza in Kansas since 2018. It's a wheat cousin you seed once and harvest for years, and it builds soil on about a third of wheat's fertilizer. No elevator posts a price for it, so his crop exists because one company sells him the seed and buys the grain at a fixed price. Most other farmers who call that company get told not yet. And the test plots can't agree on how long a field keeps paying. - [Isabelle Ouyang's School Was Finally Getting Air Conditioning. Asbestos Sent It Seven Miles Away.]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Two Work Stories Isabelle Ouyang, a special-education teacher at Philadelphia's Kensington High, felt lucky in August. After two years of crews in the halls, her school was getting air conditioning. Then asbestos turned up during demolition, and the school moved seven miles away to a borrowed building until January, new bus routes and all. Meanwhile, 52 schools still without cooling get sent home when the forecast hits 85, and the rules don't say who makes up the therapy minutes. - **Waiting on a Helene Buyout in Charlotte** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 WBTV's Naomi Kowles finds the Browns awaiting a buyout, beside neighbors too indebted to leave. - **Typhoon Evacuee From Kipnuk Still in Anchorage** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 For Alaska's News Source, Georgina Fernandez hears Tristen Carl estimate when Kipnuk might be rebuilt. - **Altadena Renter's Lease Deadline Arrives Before FEMA's Answer** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Pasadena Now's Therese Edu: Kate Adams, without FEMA rent help since May, faces a lease ultimatum. - **Eaton Fire Survivor Mary Landau Loses Her Caseworker** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 AP's Gabriela Aoun Angueira: at 78, she's $200,000 short of rebuilding, and her help is ending. - [Seventy-Two More Days on Plum Island Sound, Maybe]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Paired Feature Stories On Massachusetts' North Shore, the state has loosened the rain-closure rule for Plum Island Sound and projects it could add up to 72 harvest days a year. Brenden Doyle grows oysters where the Rowley River meets the Sound, and he knows what a lost day costs: "Those orders are going to other providers." Whether the new days reach him depends first on which side of the state's line his farm sits. After that, it comes down to the tide, the oysters and the buyers. - [When the Sewers Overflow, Dale Leavitt Stops Selling Oysters]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Paired Feature Stories "When you're closed 50% of the year to being able to sell oysters, it sort of impacts your cash flow," Dale Leavitt told a reporter in September. His farm on Massachusetts' South Coast closes whenever heavy rain overloads New Bedford's old sewers. Between September 25 and October 20, it could sell for just under five days. A state sampler and a dye study are testing where the closure line belongs, with results due in 2027 and no promise of more days. - [In Third Ward, Houston's Cooling Law Comes Due After the Heat Leaves]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Lead Feature Story When the Houston TV station KPRC visited Cheryl Henderson's Third Ward apartment in July, it counted eight machines working against the heat, among them a window unit held in place with tape and an air conditioner that no longer cooled. Henderson, who has the lung disease COPD, spoke publicly in favor of Houston's new right-to-air-conditioning law. Landlords now have until December 17 to comply, a date when the normal high is 65 degrees. Enforcement starts only when a tenant calls 311 about her own landlord, and what a winter inspector writes down can later be used against her in court. - [The Sandbags Stay]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-16 · Format: Lead Story Monica Hill kept sandbags at her front door and on her back patio all summer, through the dry months when San Diego barely sees a cloud. They sat in the heat breaking down, weeds working through the seams, each one forty to fifty pounds of sand in fabric that was slowly giving out. Hill watched floodwater wreck her apartment in January 2024. Now, with forecasters expecting a wetter-than-average winter, the city has declared an emergency and cleaned eleven miles of storm channels. Hill's sandbags were there before any of it. ### [Cascading Effects]() How climate reshapes business, insurance, and infrastructure affecting everyday lives - [The Second Envelope, and Who's Left Holding the Risk]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Lead Feature Once a year, Karyn Perry's mortgage company writes to tell her the account it keeps for her insurance and taxes came up short. In 2025 the gap was $4,751: about $400 more a month, or the whole thing at once. For many homeowners that letter, not the insurer's, is where a premium increase actually lands. New Dallas Fed research suggests what happens next. Owners with good credit tend to move, stretched owners fall behind, and investors with cheaper coverage buy the houses. From there the risk keeps traveling, toward tenants and toward paid-off owners quietly dropping their policies. - [FEMA Will Help Flood-Proof Your Neighborhood Once Enough of It Is Insured]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-30 Picture a county floodplain administrator, the local official in charge of flood rules, going over FEMA's new grant notice with a pencil this fall. The money is for prevention: bigger culverts, deeper ditches, pipes that move rainwater before it moves your furniture. A neighborhood can get up to $5 million. - **Low Mississippi forces smaller tows before rates show it** — [Source]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() — Published 2026-10-30 Ingram Barge says it began limiting how many barges a towboat can push on part of the Lower Mississippi on October 26. USDA rate data stops at October 27, and the Cairo-Memphis rate actually dipped that week. Grain tonnage is down 25%, mostly corn. - **Gallup trains roll slowly, El Paso line stays out** — [Source]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() — Published 2026-10-30 BNSF has both main tracks at Gallup, New Mexico, running again at reduced speed. South of Albuquerque, crews are rebuilding washed-out track with no reopening date, and BNSF has stopped accepting some El Paso freight. More rain was forecast. No delayed shipment has been documented yet. - **Rural energy grants now ask farmers to pay first** — [Source]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() — Published 2026-10-30 Since October 16, USDA's Rural Energy for America Program requires a project to be built and to show a year of actual output or savings before the owner can apply. An award still isn't promised. Nobody has added up who can float that year. Comments close November 2. - **Maryland's $100 million power grants go to lowest bid** — [Source]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() — Published 2026-10-30 Megawatts for Maryland opened October 26. Bidders must show they control a site and have worked with the community, but state officials say price picks the winner and community benefits can't override it. Final bids are due January 22. Until awards exist, cheaper bills are a stated goal. - **Arizona's water bank turns to backstopping city supplies** — [Source]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() — Published 2026-10-30 Arizona's water bank holds about 3.87 million acre-feet of credits, an acre-foot being roughly a year's water for two or three households. It is shifting from storing Colorado River water to covering cities in shortages expected in 2027. A credit is a legal claim. Getting it to a faucet takes pumps, permits or trades nobody has spelled out. - **Humboldt airport microgrid keeps its 19 customers lit** — [Source]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() — Published 2026-10-30 The Redwood Coast Airport Microgrid ran on its own 63 times in 38 months, covering 71.8 hours of outages, its project team told the California Energy Commission. It serves 19 connected customers, including the airport and Coast Guard. No source shows neighbors past that line can tap it, and costs outrun what it can bill. - **How the Justices Split on Boulder's Suit** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Where the justices leaned at argument, and why a 4-4 tie would keep Boulder's case alive. - **The Oil Companies' Strongest Constitutional Argument** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 A Bush-era White House lawyer argues damage awards are emissions rules only Washington can set. - **Boulder's Best Case: Deception Claims** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Argues claims of misleading the public survive federal law; losing would be "significant but bounded." - **What Climate Preparation Could Cost Boulder** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 A 2018 estimate put Boulder's bill for climate preparation at $96 million to $157 million. - **New York Appeals Its Blocked Climate Superfund** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Federal judges blocked a law billing fossil-fuel firms $75 billion; the Second Circuit rules next. - **Vermont Can't Yet Price Its Climate Damages** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Vermont's treasurer won't estimate a total, but resilience plans already run to hundreds of millions. - **One person keeping each fire household's plan moving** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Since the January 2025 fires, case managers from five nonprofits have helped survivors track insurance claims, federal appeals and rebuilding decisions in a single plan. They can't overrule another program's eligibility call or waive a lender's rule. Supervisor Kathryn Barger called each one "the one person" many families rely on. - **Funding ends October 31 with 1,400 cases open** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Hoodline counts about 109 caseworker jobs, nearly 1,400 open cases and roughly 700 families still waiting for a caseworker. FEMA rejected a $6.57 million supplemental request in September, and the state appealed. After Katrina, federal auditors found cases closed because the program was ending, which locked some households out of later help reserved for open cases. - **Only a licensed driller can fix dry wells** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Maine requires a license to drill a well or to install or repair a pump. A company keeps that license only while it employs a master driller with at least three years' experience. Deepening a well, replacing it or lowering the pump all wait on that small workforce. - **Families quoted December or spring, using laundromats meanwhile** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Households told Maine's emergency management agency the earliest driller they could book was December or spring. Until then, they were relying on laundromats and gyms for water. Officials expect the groundwater drought to last into 2027, and a key grant for low-income well replacement won't review applications until April 1, 2027. - **Your lender holds the insurance check, then inspects** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Under Fannie Mae rules, your servicer, the company that collects your mortgage payments, keeps insurance proceeds in a custodial account. If you're current, it may release the greater of $40,000 or a third of the proceeds upfront. The rest comes after periodic inspections, which can use photos, video or a video call. - **Slow inspections stall contractors; late borrowers wait longer** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Each later payment waits on an inspection, so inspection scheduling sets the pace of rebuilding and of when contractors get paid. No public data shows how long that scheduling takes. Borrowers 31 or more days behind at the time of loss get money 25 percent at a time and need a final inspection. - **One state official filing for 2,944 damaged properties** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 On October 27, Texas emergency chief Nim Kidd appealed FEMA's denial of household aid for 20 of 30 affected counties, including Kerr and Uvalde. Families can't file this appeal themselves; the state makes the case for them. Its count of damaged homes and small businesses, 132 of them destroyed, is the evidence. - **Awaiting FEMA, hundreds of families ask Red Cross** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 The aid at stake can pay for hotel stays, emergency home repairs and lost belongings. Without it, Kidd wrote, residents with thin insurance face long delays, and hundreds have asked the Red Cross for money. President Trump promised more money at a rally, but FEMA has issued no approval. Ten counties sit outside the appeal. - [Oakland Parents Bought Classroom Air Conditioners. Old Wiring Decides When They Run.]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: In-Depth Feature After a hot stretch last year left classrooms, in the principal's word, "unbearable," parents at Oakland's Chabot Elementary spent about $16,000 on portable air conditioners. This fall teachers plugged them in, and the old building started blowing fuses. Now they take turns, cooling some rooms while others wait. - [Tampa Approved a $100 Million Flood Project. The Lawsuits Arrived Three Weeks Later.]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-15 · Format: Feature Story In two Tampa neighborhoods, families have watched water rise inside their homes, and one street went under four times in forty days. The city approved a $100 million culvert to carry the stormwater to the bay. Three weeks later, two lawsuits arrived from restaurants, hotels, and property owners along the street where the digging would happen. The suits don't dispute the flooding — they challenge whether the city owns the ground it wants to dig in, whether it followed the rules for spending the money, and whether a marketing campaign is enough to make up for four years of construction outside their doors. - [Who Checks the Batteries at 2 A.M.]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-10 · Format: Deployment Story Bayfield County, Wisconsin, proved its microgrid works — batteries held a highway garage through a six-hour outage with charge to spare. Now the county is installing similar systems at 28 critical facilities using $9.7 million in federal funds. Fire halls, wastewater plants, public wells. The technology performs. But the public record doesn't answer who maintains these systems after the installers leave, in a county where volunteer fire chiefs and solo water operators already juggle multiple jobs and the battery manuals call for quarterly inspections, monthly cleaning, and round-the-clock alarm response. - [How Repeated Floods Are Unmaking Plainfield's Budget]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-02 · Format: The Full Ledger When a flood destroys a house in Plainfield, Vermont, the property's assessed value comes off the town's tax rolls — permanently if the lot goes into a federal buyout. Plainfield still has the same roads, culverts, and water system, and fewer households left to pay for them. Two July floods thirteen months apart pushed the municipal tax rate up 27 percent while the town's ability to match federal recovery grants shrank along with the base that funds everything else. ### [Emerging Science]() New climate science translated into what it means for your life - [The Chehalis Is Warming Into Good Bass Water. Who Gets to Call That a Loss?]() — By [Ivy Marlowe]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Feature Story The Chehalis, a salmon river in southwest Washington, is warming, and a new study shows it becoming better habitat for smallmouth bass, a fish from eastern North America that eats young salmon. Survey crews caught about one bass every two and a half hours in 2007 and nearly ten an hour in 2023. The study didn't count salmon lost. But a low, warm summer that's hard on salmon, and on the tribes bound to protect them, is decent fishing for anglers who love bass. What's it like to share that river? - **Upper Colorado groundwater lost nearly double in drought** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Satellites put Upper Basin groundwater loss in the 2020–22 drought at 17.5 cubic kilometers, about half a full Lake Mead and nearly double the Lower Basin's 9.4. Separately, all stored water, reservoirs and snow included, has dropped about 58 km³ since 2004. Upstream monitoring wells are sparse, so no single ranch's well shows up here. - **Adequate yearly supply can still miss summer peaks** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Blumberg and Warziniack projected 2040–2070 water demand across 28 scenarios, and irrigation withdrawals rose 32–44% in each. Shortfalls arrive when need peaks in hot months while flows drop, a timing gap a utility's annual total can hide. The scenarios assume adaptation continues and predict no specific restrictions. - **Aspen slows wildfire but is burning more itself** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Across 314 southwestern fires, daily spread fell from about 2,750 acres where aspen was scarce to roughly 900 where it covered over a quarter of the forest. A western study reaching back to 1984 found aspen burning more across its range, driven by dry fuels and thin snowpack. How much aspen it takes to shield a town is unmeasured. - **Devon's log jams and ponds slowed flood peaks** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 In five small, steep catchments in Devon, southwest England, log jams, ponds and new trees delayed the arrival of peak flow across 662 floods. How much they lowered those peaks varied widely by site. The effect fades once the ground is saturated, and the study didn't count homes kept dry. - **Thwaites Glacier's grounding-zone melt doubles its modeled 2100 sea-level contribution (Poinelli et al., Nature Communications)** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 A UC Irvine-led team modeled the kilometers-wide strip where warm seawater reaches under Thwaites Glacier and melts it from below. In their single model, the glacier's contribution by 2100 roughly doubles, to about 30 mm (1.2 inches), assuming steady conditions. The global forecast stays put. - **Failure to track a stable AMOC state under rapid climate change (van Westen, Börner and Dijkstra, Nature Climate Change)** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Utrecht researchers modeled the Atlantic overturning circulation, the current system carrying tropical warmth north, and found no fixed temperature tipping point. A slow CO₂ rise kept it stable up to +5.5 °C. Faster rises collapsed it near +2 °C. In this model, speed sets the risk. - [A Few Extra Inches of Ocean Are Shutting Down Lunch at a San Rafael Taqueria]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-30 For three days, the street outside El Tucan Tacos and Beer has filled with seawater around midday. The restaurant sits beside a small harbor in San Rafael, just north of San Francisco, and lunch service has stopped. "Right now, we have no entrance for anyone to get in or a way for people to pick up food," employee Marilyn Garcia [told KQED](https://www.kqed.org/news/12107286/marin-is-the-hotspot-bay-area-to-see-coastal-flooding-through-saturday). The building itself is fine. - **Europe's heat deaths, summers 2000–2025** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Peer-reviewed modeling of summers 2000–2025: 430,000 deaths, climate's share rising from 39% to 68%. - **Imperial College's estimate for summer 2026** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Institutional report modeling June–August 2026 only: about 50,000 deaths, peer review not confirmed. - **Where the two European studies blurred** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Le Monde on summer 2026; its 50,000 figure is the report's, not the peer-reviewed study's. - **Lancet Countdown's global toll, via WHO** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 WHO's summary of a modeled 2023 estimate, the latest year counted: 710,000 deaths, over 70% climate-driven. - **The Lancet Countdown's own data** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 The Countdown's own presentation of its modeled 2023 figure, for readers who prefer the source. - **A global yearly average, 2016–2023** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 ABC News on the Countdown's modeled 2016–2023 average: about 540,000 deaths yearly, 68% from climate. - [When Is a Drought Over? Herding Families in Northern Kenya Recovered on Different Clocks]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Main Feature In March 2023 the rains returned to Illeret, on Kenya's Lake Turkana, after five failed seasons, and aid agencies declared the drought over. That summer, 71 percent of Daasanach herders surveyed landed in the most serious category of water insecurity, up from 41 percent a year earlier, deep in the drought. The same rains brought floods that cut off food aid for months. - [The Season Your Heart Didn't Know It Was Having]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-16 · Format: Feature Story If you think about wildfire smoke as a health problem, you probably think about lungs. Two new studies point toward the heart. Research tracking hospitalizations across 20 states and 109,000 patients found that weeks and months of elevated smoke came with more heart attacks, heart failure, cardiac arrest, and stroke, on top of the expected respiratory effects. Together, the findings suggest fire season works as a sustained strain on the cardiovascular system, building over weeks instead of passing with a single bad air day. Clinical guidance for the patients living through it has barely started to catch up. - [Every Adjustment Works, Within Its Conditions]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-10-09 · Format: Regional Wheat Story A 2025 study in *Nature* measured how much historical farming adjustments protect six staple crops against projected climate losses. For rice, the combined effect cut losses by 79 percent. For wheat, the reduction was statistically zero. Field research from eastern Washington's dryland wheat country helps explain why. Cover crops, variety choices, shifted planting dates, and fallow management all depend on soil moisture the farm can't control. That dependence reaches well past agriculture, to anyone whose adaptation plan rests on conditions they can't control. - [The Fire That Stays in the Body]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-02 · Format: Persistent Exposure A fire that burns a town is chemically different from a fire that burns a forest, and the difference stays in people. Researchers who collected urine from roughly 1,400 Lahaina residents six to 18 months after the 2023 fire found antimony at nearly 40 times the level typical for the U.S. population, along with elevated manganese, barium, and arsenic. The exposure hadn't resolved. The study also turned into something its designers hadn't planned: for 60 percent of participants, it was their first health check since the fire. No other community that has burned this way has comparable data. ### [Future Tense]() Imagining plausible climate-changed futures to illuminate choices we face today - [Three Grams Returned]() — By [Wren Castellano]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: The Underline Series — Weekly Chapter In Lapwai, Idaho, Dez is looking after seed that isn't his. Fern spent two seasons selecting this amaranth on a dry Oregon slope, and she doesn't know it has left Toppenish. Two pounds now sit in a seed bank's cold room in Pullman, filed under a code that tells auditors the record is finished. Every test sprouts fewer seeds than the last. Keeping the line alive means planting it where the neighbors can see, while an analyst in Spokane, reading every record in order, is eleven days from reaching this one. - [The Borrow]() — By [Wren Castellano]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Mystery Short Story Every August, summer steelhead stall halfway up a Columbia River too warm to swim through and wait in the Borrow, a pit the railroad dug, where a creek pools cold along the bottom. Roz Teague counts them, four meters down. - [Staying the Day]() — By [Yuki Tanabe]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Coming-of-Age Story In 2087, summer is the shut season. From May to September, Mai's family of five lives in the one room the wall unit can hold cold, eating through a closet of jars they put up in the cool months. Outside, the street wakes at 4 a.m., when kids play basketball under pole lamps until someone points east and says, "Light." - [We Brought Magpie Hill's Last Operator 412 Letters. She Wanted to Talk About the Ditch.]() — Published 2026-10-30 *A note on provenance: Dot Pomaville is invented. So are Magpie Hill, the town of Bitterbrush, and March of 2040. The Forest Service paperwork she describes is, unfortunately, real.* - [The First Pot of Clams Since June]() — By [Yuki Tanabe]() · Published 2026-10-30 The bucket still held a rind of May's sand under the rim. Mira knelt at the tide line, and the cold came through her jeans before she'd set the fork. Each forkful of mud breathed sulfur. She counted out loud for her father, who pressed every hole shut with his heel. - **Salmon Shelter Behind Rail and Road Embankments** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Some heavily used cold-water refuges formed by accident, where embankments happened to pool cold water. - **Heat Waves Already Keep Americans Indoors** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Phone location data show people staying home during heat waves, retreating further as temperatures climb. - **Wildfire Smoke Is Filling the School Year** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Satellite estimates put average smoke days per public-school year at 54.4 in 2023, up from 6.8 in 2006. - **Durango's Beginner Ski Hill Closes Early** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Chapman Hill, which depends on snowmaking, shut on March 11 when the snow turned too wet. - **Hood Canal Beaches Partly Reopen for Digging** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Washington called its summer-long shellfish toxin closure unprecedented, and some beaches and species remain shut. - [Everyone Inside]() — By [Yuki Tanabe]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Second Standalone Story January 2046, McKinleyville, California. When the county loses power, Carla's side of the street runs on batteries out past the airport runway, and her floor stays warm. Ben's side goes dark. Tonight the rain hasn't let up, and groundwater is climbing toward the furnace in Ben's crawlspace. His sump pump runs on an orange extension cord strung across a flooded gutter to Carla's bedroom outlet. Every few minutes the pump kicks on and her hallway nightlight dips. Then a text arrives: the batteries her whole side shares are running low. - [Marked Complete]() — By [Wren Castellano]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: The Underline Series — Weekly Chapter October 2071, Blue Mountains, Washington. A forest planted two decades ago for the hotter climate the models promised has died standing, red as an old barn, while the skinny local trees across the road are fine. Back at the regional seed station in Pullman, Noor Sadeghi finds a single letter in the dead lot's record: a mark left by a curator nobody ever called, given a meaning she made up on a deadline twelve years ago. At one in the morning, a truck from Lapwai pulls up to the gate. - [The Business Line]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: First Standalone Story In the summer of 2042, Nora Doyle takes over her mother's catering business and calls the funeral homes to tell them Doyle does weekday office lunches now and won't be doing funerals. Her mother, Marian, built the business on funerals, and she still comes in at six for her coffee. The man who drives the van tells the story. He figures Nora decided last August, when five days of dangerous heat left the bodies waiting and the services all landed in one week. The funeral director still calls the business line. - [The Second Floor]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-10-16 · Format: The Kitchen New Orleans, 2034. A grandmother's house was raised after flooding, so her kitchen is on the second floor now, eighteen steps up from the garden where she grows lemongrass and mint. Her granddaughter comes down for a long weekend to learn the family dishes: a spicy beef noodle soup, fried rolls, a dark caramel sauce for braised fish. The grandmother is exact about all of it. The broth has to stay clear. The wrappers can't split. Some of the ingredients have changed, though neither of them says so. ### [Climate Past]() Learning from history's climate interventions, migrations, and transformation attempts - [Soldiers Grove Asked for a Study and Got a New Downtown]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Main Feature In the 1970s, the Army Corps of Engineers offered Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, a levee that would cost more than three times what it protected, with upkeep that would eat most of the village's taxes. So a businesswoman on the low ground passed around a petition asking for a study of moving downtown up the hill. Thirty of 39 floodplain merchants signed. - [One Last Crop in Vermont, 1816]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-30 By spring 1816, the Smiths had lost two harvests on a rented farm in Norwich, Vermont, and typhoid had left them in debt. That March, the town served them a legal notice to leave. - [A Tailgate Interview With the Man Bulldozing His Father's Windbreak]() — Published 2026-10-30 The cottonwoods along the creek have gone yellow, but on this October afternoon in 1975 the trees everyone in this corner of central Nebraska is talking about are the ones lying on their sides. Merle Hackberry has spent the week on a rented bulldozer, pushing over a mile of windbreak his father planted in the spring of 1936. It was twelve rows of red cedar, green ash, elm and a few hackberries. (Merle insists the hackberries are no relation.) - [Caroline Henderson Kept Deciding to Stay Through the Dust Bowl]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Two Household Stories In June 1935, on her Oklahoma Panhandle farm, Caroline Henderson pressed oiled cloths into her window frames, rubbed vaseline inside her nose before sweeping, and wrote: "We may have to leave." Then she listed six reasons they hadn't. Two were about loving the place. The rest were about what made leaving hard, starting with a farm no one would buy or rent. The following March, after a winter of kerosene-sprayed sheets, she asked in print whether staying had become "recklessness and inertia." - [On the Hottest Nights of the 1930s, New York Slept Outside Together]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Two Household Stories By sundown on July 9, 1936, New York's hottest recorded day, tenement families had already claimed Central Park's lawns. Others carried beds into Lower East Side streets or slept on Coney Island sand, rooftops, and fire escapes. They had been doing it for summers. Mayor La Guardia's order the next day told police to let them sleep. In 2024, no regular city cooling center stayed open past 11 p.m. - **Oakwood Beach, a Decade After Sandy** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Marsh grass, illegal dumping and split ownership now surround the Staten Island households who stayed. - **Houston Pays to Mow 1,200 Buyout Lots** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 The flood district spends $450,000 yearly on mowing and still draws nuisance violations. - **Columbia's Flood Lots, From Mowing to Gardens** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Mowed every two weeks since 2018, lots emptied by the 2015 flood are becoming gardens. - **Grand Forks Memorializes a Vanished Neighborhood** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Plaques naming former neighbors and a paved street map mark where Lincoln Drive stood. - **In Barre, a Buyout Lot Grows Tea** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 Neighbors found out about the farm on the city-owned lot only when tarps appeared. - **Clarksville's Park Plan Meets a Holdout** — [Source]() — Published 2026-10-30 One owner says the buyout offer won't cover moving, and the park needs his land. - [The Drought a Tax Judge Called Sudden]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Paired Features In 1977 a drought ordinance held a San Rafael family of four to 148 gallons of water a day. The hillside garden Norman and Betty Ruecker had fed through twelve irrigation systems was dead by June. They wrote it off on their taxes as a loss, and the IRS said a drought is too slow to count. In 1981 a federal judge disagreed. Behind their ration ran water trades reaching from Southern California to a pipe across the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge. - [The Paycheck the 1927 Levee Promise Left Out]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Paired Features In April 1927 Louisiana dynamited a levee below New Orleans to lower the river past the city, and the governor's proclamation said the damage to property would be paid. Many claims were. A motor-company manager named Foret, out $75 a week while his flooded company stayed shut, asked for $2,625 in lost salary. In 1929 the state Supreme Court ruled on whether a paycheck counted as a loss. Judges kept citing the answer for years. - [Who France Can Find in a Heat Wave]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Lead Feature When Parisians died in their sweltering apartments in August 2003, the people who first noticed were often neighbors, friends and building caretakers: a knock went unanswered, a phone kept ringing. - [What $14.65 Buys]() — By [Seth D. Carrington]() · Published 2026-10-16 · Format: Companion Features Forty years after a killing flood changed how Tulsa handles stormwater, every household pays $14.65 a month for detention basins, channel maintenance, development review, and a running list of properties that keep flooding. Seventy percent of the money goes to upkeep. The city says no compliant building has flooded. It also admits it hasn't faced a storm like the one that started all this. Both things are true, and they belong together. ### [The Lab]() Experimental content exploring innovative ways to illuminate our climate-changed world - [What Counts as Proof in a House That Didn't Burn]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Returning After Smoke Nina and Billy Malone's house in Altadena survived the January 2025 Eaton fire. They moved back in that August, after their insurer stopped paying for them to live anywhere else. Nina has had headaches almost every day since, and tests after a professional cleaning still found lead on the floors. - [Who Else Was in the Room When They Weighed Having Children]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() · Published 2026-10-30 · Format: Deciding About Children Mary Annaïse Heglar, a climate writer, buys her nephew books about animals and feels guilty wondering whether those animals will still exist when he's grown. About having children herself, she said she isn't sure, "even outside of climate." - [The Free AC She Didn't Take, an Imagined Interview With a Retired Title Examiner]() — Published 2026-10-30 In Phoenix, "free air conditioning" turns out to be several overlapping programs, each with its own paperwork. The City of Phoenix Housing Repairs Program calls its help a "no-cost, no-payment, fully-forgivable deferred loan." In plain terms, that means a loan you never make a payment on, forgiven as long as you meet the conditions for the length of the loan term. The program's FAQ spells out those conditions: - [Fifty Years of Belongings, Listed From Memory]() — By [Ivy Marlowe]() · Published 2026-10-30 Mary Landau, 78, lived in her Altadena house for nearly 50 years. After the Eaton Fire destroyed it in January 2025, [AP reported](https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/la-fire-survivors-are-set-to-lose-case-managers-22479828.php), her insurance claim meant doing what insurers usually require before they pay for belongings: listing them. She had to reconstruct each item, its age and its condition from memory, for a series of adjusters. "I'm very bad with paperwork," she said. A case manager helped. - **Wisconsin's heat shutoff ban starts Sunday** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 From November 1 to April 15, Wisconsin utilities can't disconnect residential heating service for nonpayment. A household already cut off stays off until it makes payment arrangements. WHEAP (1-866-HEATWIS) helps with bills and furnace repairs; complaints go to the Public Service Commission at 1-800-225-7729. - **Michigan's winter protection requires enrolling first** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Michigan's Winter Protection Plan runs November 1 to March 31 for enrolled customers: seniors 65 and older at any income, and households at or below 150% of the poverty line. Seniors already disconnected can be reconnected without paying upfront. Unpaid winter usage moves to a payment plan afterward. - **Connecticut shields only households with hardship status** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Connecticut's winter protection covers customers designated hardship or medically protected, and that designation has to be renewed every year. State regulators' own pages list the end date as April 30 in one place and May 1 in another. Either way, the full balance comes due afterward. - **Ohio caps what it costs to reconnect** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Ohio has no blanket winter ban. Through April 16, customers of state-regulated electric and gas utilities can restore or keep service by paying $175 plus a reconnection fee of up to $36, once per utility per season, with no income limit. The rest goes onto a payment plan. - **Pennsylvania's protection starts December 1, with income limits** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Pennsylvania's winter shutoff limits run December 1 through March 31, a month later than many neighboring states, and apply to households at or below 250% of the poverty line (150% for Philadelphia Gas Works customers). Above that, utilities can terminate in winter without prior state approval. - **Iowa's shutoff ban covers only LIHEAP-certified homes** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Applications for LIHEAP, the federal heating-assistance program, open in Iowa November 1 and run through April 30, 2027. The winter disconnection ban, November 1 to April 1, protects only households certified eligible, so the aid application is also what keeps the heat on. - **New York's heating aid opens a month early** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 New York's regular HEAP heating benefit opens November 2, compared with December 1 last season, and stays open until funding runs out. Furnace repair help opened October 1; Emergency HEAP waits until January 4. Base benefits range from $21 to $990, depending on how you heat. - **Federal heating money arrived, but only 90 percent** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 HHS released about $3.6 billion in LIHEAP funding to states October 9, 90% of what the current stopgap budget allows. States use this money to run their own heating programs. The stopgap expires December 11, the remaining 10% isn't settled, and the White House budget proposes eliminating the program. - **Flood insurance authority lapses December 11 unless renewed** — [Source]() — By [Maya Jiménez]() — Published 2026-10-30 Hurricane season ends November 30, and the National Flood Insurance Program's authority expires December 11 unless Congress extends it. During a lapse, existing policies stay in force until they expire, but no new federal policies or coverage increases can be written. Last fall's lapse lasted 43 days. - [Where the Afternoon Goes When School Lets Out for Heat]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Reported Fiction Feature In early September, two schools sent kids home early for heat. One was a district on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The other was Hoover High in San Diego. Each notice said when school would end, which is about all a school gets to schedule. The rest of the afternoon happened to somebody. I made up three of those people: a student waiting in a cold classroom for the usual bell, a parent leaving work at one, a bus driver on the hottest run. The notices, times and temperatures are real. - [Someone Has to Be in the Picture]() — By [Ivy Marlowe]() · Published 2026-10-22 · Format: Photo Collection Feature Melting Metropolis, a New York project collecting photos of summer heat, has one firm rule: every picture must show a person. Of the five hot-day photos on my own phone, two wouldn't qualify: a weather-app screenshot and the inside of my freezer. - [Two Years and Three Days]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-10-16 · Format: Buyouts and Changed Minds Two years after Hurricane Helene damaged homes in a North Carolina subdivision, FEMA approved funding to buy and demolish twenty-two of them. In those two years, at least four were repaired and lived in again. Owners fixed foundations, rented to tenants, sold to new buyers. Now the government is ready to buy houses people are living in, at prices based on what they were worth the day before the storm, not what they've turned into since. Every owner can still say no. Most of them aren't standing where they were when they applied. - [How Heat Moves Through an Oakland School]() — By [Wren Castellano]() · Published 2026-10-16 · Format: Heat in the Classroom Oakland Unified installed temperature sensors in 80 school buildings, logging readings every 15 minutes. On October 6, when the outdoor temperature hit 83°F, the more useful number was inside: old concrete and brick absorbing heat all day and releasing it hours later, so that a second-grader's afternoon in an upper-floor classroom looks nothing like her morning. At one elementary school, parents spent $16,000 on portable AC units, and the building blew fuses when teachers ran them at the same time. The sensors can finally show the heat. What to do about it is a separate problem. ## More - [Publication guide]() - [Issue archive]()