By Elizabeth McGowan
Heavy downpours that once felt rare are becoming more common across Ohio, turning streets into rivers and pushing stormwater systems past their limits.
Across the Midwest, precipitation is increasing and falling in heavier bursts, a trend scientists link to a warming atmosphere that can hold more moisture.
In Ohio, that pattern is already showing up in stronger storms, more frequent flooding and growing pressure on infrastructure built for a different climate.
Kari Mackenbach, the vice president of strategic pursuits at MS Consultants of Columbus and a former floodplain administrator, said the scale of recent storms is forcing communities to rethink long-held assumptions.
“In the state of Ohio, we have had four 1,000-year events within the past decade,” she said.
Events once considered statistically rare are happening more often, calling into question how risk is defined and how communities prepare.
Anil Tangirala, the director of water resources at MS Consultants and a civil engineer specializing in stormwater modeling, said storms today are not just stronger but faster. Instead of steady rainfall spread over hours or days, many communities are seeing intense bursts that deliver several inches of rain in less than an hour.
Those short, high-intensity events are particularly difficult to manage, experts say.
Stormwater systems are typically designed for more moderate, predictable conditions. That means that even a single storm can overwhelm drainage networks, flood roads and delay emergency response.
At the same time, Ohio’s landscape has changed.
Expanding development has replaced fields and forests with pavement and rooftops, reducing the land’s ability to absorb water. As a result, more rainfall becomes runoff, moving quickly into storm drains, streams and neighborhoods.
The combination of heavier rainfall and increased development is creating what Tangirala described as a compounding problem, where systems are being stressed from multiple directions at once.
Much of the infrastructure in place today was designed decades ago using outdated rainfall data. Engineers rely on federal precipitation standards that are updated only periodically, and many communities have not yet adjusted their design practices to reflect more recent projections.
As those standards lag behind current conditions, the gap between what systems were built to handle and what they are now experiencing continues to grow.
The consequences are becoming more visible.
Flooding occurs in areas that were never previously identified as high risk, raising questions about the reliability of floodplain maps and planning tools.
“We have had so many communities say, ‘This isn’t even a floodplain. Why is it flooding?” Mackenbach said.
The impacts extend beyond physical damage.
Flooding can disrupt transportation, strain emergency services and create long-term financial burdens for homeowners. Repeated events can reduce property values and leave residents facing costly repairs, often without adequate insurance coverage.
“It is a mental anguish thing,” Mackenbach said.
The risks are unevenly distributed.
Communities with aging infrastructure, limited resources or less stringent development regulations are often more vulnerable. In many cases, those communities face the greatest challenges in upgrading systems or implementing new standards.
Funding remains one of the largest barriers.
Updating stormwater infrastructure can require significant investment, and many municipalities are already struggling to maintain existing systems. At the same time, efforts to strengthen regulations or restrict development in flood-prone areas can face political resistance.
Mackenbach said the increase in flooding isn’t driven by a single factor but by a combination of heavier rainfall, land-use changes and infrastructure that hasn’t kept pace with these changes.
Looking ahead, projections suggest that extreme precipitation events will continue to increase across the region, even as other climate impacts, including periods of drought, become more pronounced.
That dual challenge could further complicate water management in Ohio, where communities must prepare for both too much and too little water, Tangirala said.
“If we don’t do anything about it, I don’t think it’s going to look good,” Tangirala said.
Still, both experts say solutions exist. Advances in data, modeling and design give communities the tools to better understand risk and plan for future conditions. Green infrastructure, updated standards and more proactive planning could help reduce the impact of extreme storms.
But those changes require action.
“You either do it or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re going to be paying for it later,” Mackenbach said.
As storms grow stronger and less predictable, the question facing Ohio communities is no longer whether the climate is changing, but how quickly they can adapt to it. You can’t outrun Mother Nature.