Storrs - The March 2010 floods in southeastern Connecticut and
Rhode Island are part of a new pattern of extreme rainfall
events in New England that is likely to continue as the region
becomes warmer and wetter with climate change. So said David
Vallee, lead hydrologist at the National Weather Service's
Northeast River Forecast Center in Taunton, Mass., during the
keynote address at the Connecticut Conference on Natural
Resources at the University of Connecticut on Monday. "I believe
we are now seeing the impact of a warming climate in the
intensity of storms and the blocking up of multiple weather
events in succession," Vallee said to an audience of about 270
gathered in the Student Union. Tropical plumes are carrying
slow-moving "atmospheric rivers" of rainfall to the Northeast
with historic frequency and intensity, he said, as more moisture
is carried over land as average temperatures rise. "We are just
not cold anymore," he said, showing a graph of rising average
winter termperatures over the last two dec