This is NHPR’s The Big Question. In this series, we ask you a question about life in New Hampshire, you submit an answer, and your voice may be featured on air or online.
This year has brought the longest recorded heat wave in New Hampshire history. We’ve also seen heavy rainfall and destructive flooding, all of which will intensify with human-caused climate change.
Maybe you’ve had to repair damage from climate change-related weather, have started new life patterns, or made choices about your future because of our changing climate.
So, for August’s Big Question we asked you: How has climate change touched your life in New Hampshire?
We wanted to know if climate change has affected your life directly in the Granite State, or if it’s factored into the decisions you’ve made for yourself or your family.
Here’s what some of you said.
Carolyn - Kingston, NH: I moved here about three years ago, and I consider myself a ‘climigrant,’ I think is the term that people are using today. I lived on an island in the Gulf of Mexico, in Texas, and I just could not do the hurricanes and the heat anymore. I love the island life. I miss it. But at my age and stage of life, I cannot afford to go through another hurricane. So, my son-in-law and daughter took the first jump and left. And then I had a job offer up in New England and I left. That's a huge thing, and I know that not everybody has the money to be able to make a change like that, but if you can, I think it's really important.
Cathy - Exeter, NH: When I was growing up in southwestern New Hampshire in the 60s and then in college in Durham in the 70s, a heat wave was three days and never above 90 degrees, that I recall. Now it seems that heat waves are at least a week long, and the temperatures are more like 100, or close to 95 to 100, I would say, and very humid. When I started working from home, I finally had to install air conditioning because it just became unbearable. So, that's my view of climate change. It scares the daylights out of me.
Lara - Manchester, NH: One of the things that I notice most is the lack of snow in Manchester, New Hampshire. I remember moving into our house in 2011 and having the Halloween snowstorm that actually shut down trick-or-treat for a whole week. As the years have passed, I use my snow blower less and less. I would say maybe I used it once last year. It's just not the same kind of snow that we used to get, you know? And I lived through the blizzard of ‘78. I was seven, and I remember losing my boots in the snow. So that's one of the things I miss the most.
Lisa - Claremont, NH: The bulk of my money for the year comes from dry hay, which we sell from our farm. And the rain has just obviously impacted that production of that feed. It rains all the time. And so we sort of had to develop a strategy to make our product. It's impacted the quality of our product. We haven't had to use preservatives to cure hay in the past. We're wondering if we might have to unfortunately turn to [using] something to help us get the feed dried down in the future, just trying to move forward and stay afloat and stay viable as a small farm in northern New Hampshire.
Theresa - Durham, NH: Climate change is impacting our family's sheep farm in Durham in many ways. Some examples are those days with high heat in August and September are really pushing back sheep breeding season for shepherds across northern New England as temperatures over 85 degrees impacts sperm viability, which means our lambs are being born later in the spring. That drought, or the wetter summer weather we've been having also impacts our ability to make and grow hay, which means we have challenges sometimes getting enough feed for livestock in the winter.
Brandon - Portsmouth, NH: Climate change has affected my life, I suppose, negatively as a winter lover. My whole life I've lived in New Hampshire and winter has always been a part of New Hampshire. Fortunately for me, I embraced it from a young age. I always enjoyed going out in the snow, feeling the cold, feeling the extremes. It kind of took a dark season and made it more exciting throughout my lifetime. It's noticeably shifted to warmer temperatures, more rain, less snow. I was actually talking to my wife about this recently. Winter was such a part of my life growing up that the shifts in winter have felt like a part of me has kind of gone away.
