On yet another wet weekend, a group of ten braced a downpour to walk along the trails of Strawberry Mansion’s Discovery Center for a wild plant tour. Their journey began at the trail entrance, where an innocuous weed was growing. Tour guide Lady Danni Morinich, a local herbalist and forager, identified the plant as yellow
MoreOn a dock where Wissahickon Creek meets the Schuylkill River, LandHealth Institute deputy director Mayci Shimon steadies kayaks as paddlers carefully shimmy in, some for the first time. Despite the rumble of SEPTA traffic on a nearby bridge, the Philadelphia Canoe Club offers a serene escape. Nestled away, the historic, 119-year-old house aglow with the
MoreBeing a mother is hard under the best of circumstances — now imagine caring for a toddler alone in the forest during an apocalypse set off by extreme flooding. That’s the arduous task Liv Vela takes on as she tries to survive in the wilderness of a futuristic United States with her 3-year-old son Milo
MoreIn early September 2021, the remnants of Hurricane Ida swept through Southeastern Pennsylvania, destroying hundreds of homes, resulting in more than a hundred million dollars in economic damages and killing five people. Much of the pain was felt within the Schuyl-kill River watershed, where Ida left homes and businesses flooded from Schwenksville to Norristown to
MoreWhen Tropical Storm Isaias hit the East Coast in early August 2020, the waters of Perkiomen Creek surged higher than 19 feet, a record for the waterway and eight feet beyond its flood stage. Homes situated along the creek on First Avenue in Collegeville, Montgomery County, bore the brunt of the flooding. But the Federal
MoreDuring his third year in office as a Pennsylvania State Representative, Joe Webster found a menace hiding within his bucolic Montgomery County district. Snaking its way through the landscape, lurking beneath bridges near the downtowns of Schwenksville, Graterford and Collegeville, the Perkiomen Creek was lying in wait. When the remnants of Hurricane Ida arrived in
MoreFloods are expensive. Homes and the possessions inside them are costly to repair and replace, plus displaced flood victims often have to pay to stay elsewhere while their home is made livable again. Here, we unpack the main tool for helping residents handle those costs: flood insurance. Know your flood risk Bounded by rivers and
MoreCamden In June 2021, Grid published a story on flooding in Camden’s Cramer Hill neighborhood, highlighting the disaster’s disparate impact on low-income communities of color. Since Grid last checked in, Franco Montalto, an engineering professor and researcher at Drexel University, and his team completed an advanced model that can simulate a variety of different infrastructure
MoreA while back, I learned that Grid contributor Carolyn Kousky is a national expert on flood insurance, a topic I knew little about. I asked her to write a primer for our readers who, if they’re anything like me, could stand to learn something. When I read through her first draft, I learned that FEMA
MoreFor two decades, author Jeff Goodell has been working the climate beat for Rolling Stone magazine. He says it was while writing his first book about the coal industry and witnessing mountaintop removal mining that he understood the peril the planet is in. He’s given countless more readers that same dreadful understanding in his back-to-back
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