Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson is blaming (what else?) climate change for this week’s severe thunderstorms.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson blamed climate change for this week’s heavy rains and flash flooding that swamped streets and tested the city’s aging infrastructure, even as scientists caution against linking any single storm to global warming.
“Not just Milwaukee, but Wisconsin, our country and the world has to continue to prepare for the effects of a changing climate,” Johnson told reporters Thursday.
The mayor urged residents to report flooded roads and avoid driving through standing water, as emergency crews responded to numerous calls. Heavy rainfall overnight April 14 and into the following days caused localized flooding across the Milwaukee area, with some spots seeing several inches in a short period. Similar storms brought hail and isolated severe weather to parts of Wisconsin.
The mayor’s comments follow Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski becoming a national laughingstock after posting a video from her front yard during Tuesday’s storms, screeching that golf-ball-sized hail proved climate change.
“Republicans say we don’t have climate change, but this is golf ball-sized hail in my front yard. This is not normal and we can’t keep ignoring our environment,” she declared, drawing widespread mockery online for treating routine spring thunderstorms as evidence of an apocalypse.
Scientists widely agree it is impossible to attribute any individual storm, flood or hail event directly to climate change. Weather is driven by complex, short-term atmospheric dynamics, including jet stream patterns, temperature gradients and natural variability such as El Niño or La Niña cycles.
While a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, potentially contributing to heavier precipitation in some regions over decades, no robust evidence ties rising global temperatures to more frequent or intense thunderstorms, localized flooding or hail in the Upper Midwest.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes low confidence in human influence on many convective extremes at regional scales. Wisconsin has recorded severe hail for centuries, including stones far larger than golf balls long before SUV emissions.
