The images from Germany are startling and horrifying: houses, shops and streets in the picturesque cities and villages along the Ahr and other rivers violently washed away by fast-moving floodwaters. The flooding was caused by a storm that slowed to a crawl over parts of Europe on Wednesday, dumping as much as 6 inches of rain on the region near Cologne and Bonn before finally beginning to let up Friday. There was flooding in Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, too, but the worst impacts were in Germany, where the official death toll passed 125 on Friday and was sure to climb.
The storm was a frightening example of an extreme weather event, with some places getting a month’s worth of rain in a day. But in an era of climate change, extreme weather events are becoming more common.
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