Rivers reached record levels in some places, in some cases exceeding marks set by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. Roads, bridges, homes, farms, and downtowns were damaged by too much rain falling over terrain and infrastructure that couldn’t move it away fast enough.²
A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor. The result can be dry stretches followed by sudden downpours. A town can worry about drought one week and pump cellars the next. That’s the new rhythm.
Heat doesn’t always let go.
People notice the afternoon high: the warning message on the phone, the shimmer over pavement, the road crew under hard sun. The more dangerous heat often comes after dark, when brick, asphalt, roofs, and parking lots keep giving warmth back and the night offers no relief.
That matters in older houses without central air, top-floor apartments, nursing homes, crowded bedrooms, and neighborhoods with fewer trees. Boston’s own climate planning has warned for years that heat isn’t distributed evenly; the burden falls hardest where pavement, housing, age, health, and income turn temperature into exposure.³ A person can survive a brutal day if the night gives relief. Without that relief, the body never gets its reset.
On the weather map, it’s a temperature anomaly. At the hospital, it’s a person.
Quiet doesn’t always mean safe.
El Niño often increases wind shear over the Atlantic, making it harder for tropical systems to organize. Colorado State University’s April forecast called for a somewhat below-normal 2026 Atlantic season:13 named storms,6 hurricanes, and 2 major hurricanes.⁴ Useful information. Not a promise.
New England learned that in 1991, when Hurricane Bob drove a 10-to-15-foot surge into Buzzards Bay. In Mattapoisett,29 of 37 homes on Cove Road were destroyed; at Angelica Point,32 of 35 homes were lost.⁵ Bob doesn’t have to come back for the lesson to matter. Averages don’t flood houses. Tracks do.
Winter doesn’t always stay winter.
A strong El Niño often favors milder conditions across the northern United States. In New England, winter doesn’t disappear so much as lose reliability. A warm winter can still be expensive. Snow turns to rain, rain turns to ice, thaw turns to freeze, a plowable storm becomes glaze, and a mountain builds a base only to watch rain take it away.
New England saw the cost of those margins in January 2018, when the so-called bomb cyclone combined heavy snow, wind, and coastal flooding. Boston set a new high-water mark of 15.16 feet, edging past the Blizzard of ’78 record. Streets filled with icy water. Coastal communities flooded.⁶ Two months later, another nor’easter produced the third-highest water level on record at the Boston tide gauge, with severe flooding from Portland, Maine, south to Cape Cod Bay.⁷
That’s the winter to worry about: the one that keeps changing its mind.
For a ski town, that means a season of negotiations. Snow, rain, freeze, thaw, ice, bare spots, and another warmup don’t only hurt the trail. They move into restaurants, rentals, gas stations, lift workers, plow drivers, and town budgets.